Cameron Neylon responds to the allegations that PLoS is a pay-to-play vanity press:
That an author pays model has the potential to create a conflict of interest is clear. That is why, within reputable publishers, structures are put in place to reduce that risk as far as is possible, divorcing the financial side from editorial decision making, creating Chinese walls between editorial and financial staff within the publisher. The suggestion that my editorial decisions are influenced by the fact the authors will pay is, to be frank, offensive, calling into serious question my professional integrity and that of the other AEs. It is also a slightly strange suggestion. I have no financial stake in PLoS. If it were to go under tomorrow it would make no difference to my take home pay and no difference to my finances. I would be disappointed, but not poorer.cameronneylon.net, Science in the Open » Blog Archive » In defence of author-pays business models, Apr 2010
You should read the whole thing.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=7b0685af-2241-4f5c-8519-19c653a47467)
To be honest, I agree with the initial piece on PLoS at Scholarly Kitchen. I think Cameron is way off in his rebuttal. But, hey, who am I? No one.
There’s room for people to take either side of this debate overall, but the fact that some things are broken is not debated by anyone. The reason I posted the excerpt I did was to call out the rudeness of the suggestion that anyone who has published in PLoSONE has a meaningless vanity publication and that the editors were upping the acceptance rate to rake in money.
I would be really surprised that the editors themselves would be doing that. but we have to agree that PLoS ONE is a cash cow, and the publication prices at PLoS are higher than what they should be.
But as he showed, the prices aren’t all that much higher than the toll access journals when you figure in page charges and color charges and so on.
I just published in Plos One. Reviews were rigorous. I think time will show that this journal is publishing the same quality of work as any other, with the added benefits of driving up individual article impact through accessibility. If everyone submitted their papers to plos 1 then the journal hierarchy would die, and the world would be a better place.
I know you did, I already bookmarked your paper in Mendeley. No link yet, because it hasn’t yet been indexed, but when it is, I’ll send it your way so you can keep an eye on the downloads and readers.