NEWS
2010 - 10 - 12 Publication in « Science »
Jacques Zimmer, senior researcher, member of the Editorial Board of the PLoS ONE journal, has just published a letter in Science. This letter aims to defend PLoS ONE magazine which was hardly attacked and criticized about its publications’ process. Dr. Zimmer part of the Laboratory of Immunogenetics and Allergology – CRP-Santé has been recognized for his involvement and implication within this publication in “Science” which approves his answer to these claims.
This letter is the result of a long problematic according to PLoS ONE publication’s process. PLoS ONE is indeed an online journal which gives a free access to scientific information. The magazine provides a free access to online debates and discussions. This is clearly for everyone an opportunity to publish his comment as a peer review post publication within this scientific magazine. Editors can accept only articles that they have evaluated, most often together with external reviewers. Each editor is, of course, the expert in the field he evaluates. However PLOS One, founded in 2006, was mainly criticized for his new approach: some of the readers thought that the peer review process was not efficient and strict enough. However this magazine has a very rigorous process and even if critical voices said that this model would become a failure, PLoS ONE has become a real success story. Today, the magazine can be proud of more than 17.000 submissions since 2006 and more than 10.000 articles were published. Since July 2010, the submission process has still been improved: more than 2.000 articles have already been submitted. Thomson Scientific has also changed his mind about PLOS ONE and the journal has been given an impact factor of 4.3.
In order to answer to PLoS ONE claims published a few weeks ago, and as a member of PLOS One Board, Dr. Jacques Zimmer has sent a letter explaining PLoS ONE’s process, how relevant it is for scientific authors and publications and in which way PLoS ONE does not publish “bad Science”. This letter has been published in Science, on October 1st , 2010. This gives additional credit to this scientific journal which is still under development.
Jacques Zimmer has been a researcher at the Laboratory of Immunogenetics and Allergology for seven years. He is an MD PhD with currently an exclusive activity as a research scientist. His fields of expertise are natural killer (NK) cells, an important component of the innate immune system, and he is supervising at CRP-Santé several projects about NK cells. He also regularly reviews papers for other scientific journals.