Open access is gaining momentum. Authors are submitting papers in ever-increasing
numbers to open-access journals. Several prominent research sponsors, including the
Wellcome Trust, the Max Planck Society, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
(CNRS), and the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche (INSERM), have recently
pronounced that open access is the best way for the researchers they support to publish
their work. Several established commercial and not-for-profit publishers have announced
plans to experiment with open-access models for some or all of their journals.
Delighted and encouraged, we gear up for the launch of
PLoS Medicine this autumn—the next step in our efforts to bring the
benefits of open access to the entire scientific and medical community. We aim to make
PLoS Medicine a premier journal, providing open access to the best
medical research to researchers, to physicians and other caregivers, and to the public.
The case for open access to medical research is even stronger than it is for basic
research in biology. There are more interested parties: patients and their advocates;
biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies that develop drugs and medical devices; doctors,
nurses, and other healthcare providers; and health policy-makers at the national and
international levels. The goal of the medical research enterprise is—or should
be—scientifically, ethically, and socially responsible medicine, which means research that
will benefit patients worldwide.
The reality looks somewhat different. Large investments into basic research have not yet
lived up to their full potential to save lives and improve their quality. Doctors,
patients, and their advocates do not have ready access to the combined peer-reviewed
evidence from medical research. The prices for the latest drugs often put them out of reach
of patients in poor countries or poor patients in countries without universal healthcare
systems. Moreover, research focuses disproportionately on the potentially lucrative
treatments for diseases of wealthy societies, shortchanging the poorer countries, which
bear the greatest burden of disease.
A medical journal by itself cannot change this reality. But with the help of researchers
and practicing physicians around the world who recognize the need and opportunity for
change, we seek to create a journal that promotes medical research and practice that is
both scientifically rigorous and compassionate.
Open access to this literature will strengthen the medical research community by giving
all stakeholders free and immediate access to the latest medical
research, along with new and more powerful search tools and links between the literature
and other relevant information.
PLoS Medicine will be an international, modern, general medical journal,
covering all areas in the medical sciences, from basic studies to large clinical trials and
cost-effectiveness analyses. We will concentrate on human studies that enhance our
understanding of disease epidemiology, etiology, and physiology; the development of
prognostic and diagnostic technologies; and trials that test the efficacy of specific
interventions and those that compare different treatments. We will publish original
research and commentary that promotes translation both of basic research into clinical
investigation and of clinical evidence into practice.
A truly broad medical journal is an ambitious project, but we want
PLoS Medicine to promote an integrated understanding of the patient—to
make it easy for people to read outside their specialty area. “Doctors are systems
biologists,” as one medical researcher put it, and inspiration can often be found in
unfamiliar territory.
Articles published in
PLoS Medicine will be rigorously peer-reviewed. Academic and professional
editors, supported by expert peer-reviewers, will select those studies that drive research
forward—in this case, toward medical applications and benefits for patients.
This issue of
PLoS Biology contains two “human” studies that met our criteria for
excellence and originality, a paper by Howard Chang and colleagues (found at DOI:
10.1371/journal.pbio.0020007) on the microarray analysis of tumors and one by Sarah
Rowland-Jones and coworkers (found at DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0020020) that examines how
HIV exhausts the capacity of the immune system. Similar papers submitted in the future will
be published in
PLoS Medicine , alongside studies that have more direct implications for
clinical practice. This issue also contains several articles describing more basic advances
with medical implications: a study by Terry van Dyke and colleagues (found at DOI:
10.1371/journal.pbio.0020022) describing a new mouse model for breast cancer, a report on a
novel approach to drug synthesis by Chaitan Khosla and coworkers (found at DOI:
10.1371/journal.pbio.0020031), and an article by Stephen Dowdy et al. (found at DOI:
10.1371/journal.pbio.0020036) on targeted modulation of p53 activity.
PLoS Biology will continue to solicit and publish such articles, but we
will bring them—and similar ones published elsewhere—to the attention of the readers of
PLoS Medicine .
Like
PLoS Biology ,
PLoS Medicine must be a community journal to achieve its goals. If you
are a researcher or an individual anywhere in the world who has a stake in medical research
and if the goals of
PLoS Medicine outlined here resonate with you, please contact us.
PLoS Medicine will accept submissions beginning in April 2004, and we are
looking for advocates who will help to spread the word about open access and
PLoS Medicine in the global medical community and for investigators who
will submit excellent research, review submitted articles, and contribute editorials and
commentaries.
PLoS Medicine is and will stay a work in progress, and we want to consult
with as many people as possible, both before the launch and as
PLoS Medicine evolves. Sign up to join the
PLoS Medicine community at http://www.plos.org/medicine and help us to
make the best of medical research and practice accessible to a global audience.
