Following the release of PLoS One, the future of PLoS journals was always going to be interesting. Pedro, in a comment earlier this week, mentioned that new PLoS journals were unlikely. Well, I believe we have a pretty decent idea of where PLoS is going, following the announcement of the release of the PLoS Hub for Clinical Trials. What is it?
Launched in September 2007, the PLoS Hub for Clinical Trials collects PLoS journal articles that relate to clinical trials. The Hub is a destination site for researchers to share their views and build a dynamic, interactive community.
Currently, the PLoS Hub for Clinical Trials features articles originally published in PLoS Clinical Trials, along with clinical trials articles from PLoS ONE.
In the future, this new resource will expand to include articles from all the PLoS titles that publish clinical trials. It will also feature open-access articles from other journals plus user-generated content.
The new site is built on the Topaz platform, and therefore allows you to comment, annotate, rate, etc.
This is obviously not the last such hub (just note the url and menu options). I really like what PLoS is trying to do. By building communities around topics, aggregating information and providing a web-based platform for their activities, PLoS is pushing the envelope of online scientific publishing. I hope other publishers take note of the efforts of PLoS and Nature, which are streets ahead of the rest of the game.
I do have one request. Open ID/XFN support (the latter might already be there)!!!
Further reading
Nature Precedings
PLoS One
Topaz
4 Comments
I could not find the comment but to be clear what I think is that they will not launch new journals any time soon since they will probably be focusing on this re-grouping of content.The Hubs are not journals in the sense that we don’t submit the manuscript to the Hubs. I hope they find some time and man power to allow for more user generated content in the Hubs. Some kind of “editorial” boards that can post the editorials and some Hubs that are created by the users. Some cross between Nodapoint, Digg and Nature Reports.
I could not find the comment but to be clear what I think is that they will not launch new journals any time soon since they will probably be focusing on this re-grouping of content.The Hubs are not journals in the sense that we don't submit the manuscript to the Hubs. I hope they find some time and man power to allow for more user generated content in the Hubs. Some kind of “editorial” boards that can post the editorials and some Hubs that are created by the users. Some cross between Nodapoint, Digg and Nature Reports.
Pedro
I think your post on PLoS hubs nailed it. I think of these hubs as vertical Digg-style sites built around scientific content. The trackback feature on Topaz is the hidden secret in all this. What I would like to see, given PLoS’ involvement with Scivee is integration with relevant pubcasts hosted there
Pedro
I think your post on PLoS hubs nailed it. I think of these hubs as vertical Digg-style sites built around scientific content. The trackback feature on Topaz is the hidden secret in all this. What I would like to see, given PLoS' involvement with Scivee is integration with relevant pubcasts hosted there
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[...] jflack wrote an interesting post today on The future of PLoS – Community and scienceHere’s a quick excerpt [...]
[...] This is a follow up to an earlier post on the recently announced PLoS Hub for Clinical Trials [...]