Public Library of Science to Launch International Open-Access Medical Journal.

Health/Medical Writers/Education Writers

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 5, 2004

New discoveries about human health and disease will be made freely and immediately available to anyone in the world with an Internet connection -- from physicians and researchers to patients and policy makers -- in a new open-access medical journal, PLoS Medicine, to be launched in Autumn, 2004.

"Thanks to the Internet and new strategies for financing publication costs, it is now possible to share the results of medical research with anyone, anywhere, who could benefit from it. How could we not do it?" argued Dr. Harold E. Varmus, Nobel laureate, former National Institutes of Health Director, and one of the co-founders of the Public Library of Science (PLoS).

PLoS, a non-profit organization whose mission is to make reliable scientific and medical literature a public resource, formally announced today that it will publish PLoS Medicine, an open-access, international, general medical journal, beginning this fall. A "call for papers" has been issued, indicating that the journal is now accepting submissions.

PLoS Medicine will publish important peer-reviewed advances in all areas of medical research, including epidemiology and public health, together with summaries of all research articles written for non-specialists and features about international developments in medicine, controversial medical topics, neglected diseases, and other health-related subjects. All content in the journal will be freely available online and allowed to be reproduced worldwide for teaching, promoting awareness of new discoveries, and other purposes.

The prospect of an open-access alternative to the existing subscription-based prestigious medical journals has been welcomed by many in the health research and advocacy worlds. Already more than 75 physicians and researchers have been recruited to the editorial board of PLoS Medicine, ranging from an AIDS physician in Rwanda to the leader of a gene therapy unit in Paris to a cardiologist in Salt Lake City.

PLoS was founded in 2000 by Dr. Varmus and colleagues Patrick O. Brown of Stanford University and Michael B. Eisen of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley. Last October, the organization launched its first open-access journal of peer-reviewed scientific research, PLoS Biology, whose content has been favorably reviewed by the New York Times, Le Monde, and countless other media outlets around the world.

"The case for open access to medical research is even stronger than it is for basic research in biology. The National Institutes of Health in the United States alone spends over $28 billion on biomedical research. Everyone in the country -- and around the world -- should have access to the results of those studies," commented Joseph L. Goldstein, a member of the PLoS Medicine editorial board and Nobel Prize winner in Medicine based at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

PLoS Medicine will be overseen by PLoS Senior Editors Barbara Cohen, former editor of Nature Genetics and former executive editor of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, and Virginia Barbour, a physician and haematologist and former executive editor of the Lancet. Working closely with members of the editorial board and in consultation with the wider medical and health research community, they will develop an open-access forum for important studies and for discussion of medical research and practice in the broader context of global health and social responsibility.

For more information about the Public Library of Science, see http://www.plos.org.

For more information about PLoS Medicine, see http://www.plosmedicine.org.