Open Acess Journals

Dan and Bridget have decried the costs associated with accessing primary research in many journals. Despite the fact that publishers charge authors to publish, advertisers, and subscribers for their services, they balk at the idea of having to provide the public with free access to the research that we have supported with our tax dollars. (some) Publishers have also demonstrated that they are not above publishing "advertorial" journals for pharmaceutical companies if the price is right. Specifically I am referring to Elsevier's publishing of the bogus "Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine" for Merck. But alas, I digress...

Open access journals like those published by the Public Library of Science offer an alternative to the collection racket that is the traditional publishing industry. Unfortunately publishing in these journals lacks the prestige associated with many of the more famous traditional journals. This may be changing though. The discovery and description of ancestral primate Darwinius masillae appears not in Science or Nature but rather PLoS ONE, the flagship journal from the Public Library of Science. The fact that the article's authors elected to publish findings of this magnitude in an open access journal may mark the beginning of a change in publishing industry.


Darwinius masillae via: Franzen JL, Gingerich PD, Habersetzer J, Hurum JH, von Koenigswald W, et al. 2009 Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology. PLoS ONE 4(5): e5723. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005723