Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Thursday, October 16, 2003

More on the PLoS Biology launch

Paul Elias, Free online journal seeks revolution in science publishing, Associated Press, October 16, 2003. In addition to the usual overview explaining open access to a new audience, Elias makes this nice point: "By Monday morning, the Duke paper [on the monkey using brain impulses to control a robot arm] was rendered inaccessible by a crush of traffic from interested readers that crashed the Public Library's servers. The site received 500,000 hits in the hours immediately after the paper was posted and some 80,000 downloads occurred, prompted by worldwide media coverage. 'Nothing else has ever argued so strongly for open-access publishing,' said Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researcher Michael Eisen, who co-founded the nonprofit organization along with Nobel laureate Harold Varmus and Stanford University biochemist Patrick Brown."