Comments on: Helen Jaques: New publishing models at the BMJ Editors’ seminar http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2010/03/12/helen-jaques-new-publishing-models-at-the-bmj-editors-seminar/ Just another blogs.bmj.com weblog Sun, 10 Feb 2013 15:13:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Helen Jaques http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2010/03/12/helen-jaques-new-publishing-models-at-the-bmj-editors-seminar/#comment-5980 Helen Jaques Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:12:01 +0000 http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/?p=1149#comment-5980 I think launching Nature Communications is a very shrewd business idea from NPG – they can make a profit out of papers they would have otherwise passed up on and effectively handed over to their competitors. I should point out though that papers rejected from NPG journals won’t automatically be submitted to Communications, and researchers can submit straight to Nature Communications rather than via a reject from another Nature title, so Communications isn’t purely a way of ring fencing and drawing profit out of Nature rejections. You’re right though, I think NPG is trying to catch up with companies like PLoS ONE and cast itself as an innovative open access publisher.

The idea of database publishing is very interesting and certainly a good way of making sure all research gets out into the public domain. Presumably a publisher would publish all solid research in an online database and then cherry pick the best bits for a monthly journal.

I actually think that the BMJ has one of the best approaches to open access publishing. Research – which is of key public interest; could improve clinical practice, patient outcomes, and, indeed, society as a whole were it widely read and applied; and is often publicly funded – is available for free. Other content, such as opinion and features, is pay to access, as there is less of an argument that such content should be “available to everybody everywhere.” But I am, of course, somewhat biased…

]]> By: Richard Smith http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2010/03/12/helen-jaques-new-publishing-models-at-the-bmj-editors-seminar/#comment-5922 Richard Smith Sun, 21 Mar 2010 17:03:57 +0000 http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/?p=1149#comment-5922 Being an old dog, I can remember when a publisher of JAMA was sacked for having the idea that it might make sense to publish in another AMA publication the 95% of articles rejected by JAMA.

Some 20 years later Nature is doing exactly that–and now it’s innovation.

I must declare an interest in that I’m on the board of PLoS and a zealot for open access publishing, but it seems to me that traditional publishers–like Nature–were bound to respond to the success of PlOs One, which is now publishing upwards of 500 papers a month. Nature Communications seems to me to be a copy of PLoS One with a different–much more profit oriented–model. It will be interesting to see of other publishers–like Elsevier and the BMJ Group–follow. They might have to otherwise scientific publishing might be concentrated into a very few hands.

I don’t agree, Helen, with your conclusion that Nature is about quality and PLoS about quantity. I’d say that Nature is about profit and conserving its inflated status, whereas PLoS is about trying to ensure that all research is available to everybody everywhere for free to use as they want. And PLoS One is not the “flagship journal” of PLoS. PloS Biology and PLoS Medicine are the flagship journals, and PLoS One is not really a journal: it’s a database as will be Nature Communications.

I’ve long argued that databases will replace journals as the places where original science is published, and the job of the few journals that remain will be to find the science that is relevant to its readership and present it in as sexy a way as possible. Rather as the BMJ is already doing.

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