PLoS ONE critics - (Feb/15/2013 )

What does the scientific community here think about PLoS ONE and publishing in it?

I've heard a number of scientists actually question the credentials of this journal with it's high acceptance rate and the fact that acceptance is purely based on soundness of science rather than novelty. It also seems like PLoS has become a 'last resort' place to publish for people who get frustrated by the reviewing process or rejection by 'higher' impact journals.

Thoughts?

I think what you said is true. Nowadays there are many for-profit journals and new journals are born everyday.

pcrman on Sat Feb 16 04:16:21 2013 said:

science noob on Fri Feb 15 12:26:43 2013 said:

Is the initial acceptance rate of PLOS One much higher than other journals ? Or do many papers have to go through revision there too ?

science noob on Fri Feb 15 12:26:43 2013 said:

I wonder what is so wrong with that.
BTW PLoS ONE has an impact factor of around 4, much more than most entomology journals have, so if you could afford it, it would be first choice for entomologists (and I think in several other research areas with very good and very specialised journals with quite low impact factors it would be the same).

hobglobin on Fri Mar 8 18:04:50 2013 said:

Agree. Novelty isn't the be all and end all, indeed pursuing novelty would leave out the critical step of Science - confirming or disputing results. Indeed, as we all know, getting data published that contradicts an 'original' paper is extremely difficult and this does us all a grave disservice.
As long as the experimental regime has been conducted according to some basic principles then it should be published. In these days of electronic storage and searching this doesn't clog up the system with negative results and citability should be a decent disuassasion to publishing frivilous experiments (but I'd rather a few more frivilous papers than missing out on important repudiation/agreement that furthers the dataset).

PLoS ONE does have a decent impact factor and also does seem to side step at least some of the backstabbing, reputation trashing one-up-manship that sometimes goes with the peer reviewing process found elsewhere.

tl;dr

Summary: I'm all for PLoS ONE.

Astilius on Mon Mar 11 15:20:59 2013 said:

Also agree.

I think, too, that the definition of "novelty" can be quite subjective. Who decides what is novel enough, and what is just boring ol' good science? There is the potential for good quality, sound and informative research to be overlooked in favour of sexy new novelties, if that is what is weighted too heavily in the selection criteria for publishability.

The retraction rate for higher impact journals is apparently on the rise- due, some say, to the quest for the most novel, new and exciting finding.
Of course there are other factors (such as the fact that higher impact journals are likely more widely read and therefore flaws more likely to be found, and better tools for uncovering frauds such as image manipulations etc).

My view is that we need both.

We need good quality science. And this science needs to be both novel and exciting, as well as thorough and confirmatory. There is a vital place for both, and neither should be viewed as second rate to the other.

Plos ONE has a decent imact factor around 4. But, I think this is largely due to open access, not necessarily the science. I think with the rise of open access you are going to have these new open access journals with higher impact factors, but they still wont be regarded as top notch journals. My understanding of Plos ONE is that it accepts the research that isnt so much novel/high impact as research in other high-impact journals. But yet it maintains a decent impact factor somehow? I think you have to take the open access journal impact factors with the notion that they are probably inflated.