Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

A Royal Wedding?

The Marriage Between Open Access and the International Society for Computational

Biology

Philip E. BourneUniversity of California San Diego

pbourne@ucsd.eduhttp://www.sdsc.edu./pb/Talks

Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

The Marriage

• A young Society (the groom) and a new open access publication (the bride)

• Their happily ever after - broadening the dissemination and impact of their science

• Ah but .. previous relationships linger

• And like many marriages the commitment did not come easily

Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

The Groom - Life So Far• ~2000 member Society founded 1995• Primarily computational molecular biology• Previous “official journal” Bioinformatics (OUP)

– royalty arrangement• Other journals offered at a discount• FASEB Member• Executive Officer & Offices at UCSD• Main activates: ISMB, journals, education, SIG’s,

regional meetings, Web portal

Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

The Groom’s Strategic Priorities

• Intellectual leadership – to sponsor and promote the highest quality conferences and society journal.

• Advocacy – to develop, disseminate and promote policies on behalf of our members and scientific discipline.

• Financial Stability – to improve the long-term financial footing of the society in order to achieve the above goals.

• Governance – to improve the governing structures of the society in order to improve the responsiveness of the society to members, and to enhance our ability to achieve our strategic priorities.

Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

The Groom’s Monetary Situation:Preliminary 2004 Year End Financial

Projections

• Total assets, 1 January 2004 $ 197,093

• Estimated 2004 Income $ 824,635

• Estimated 2004 Expenses $ 770,000

• Estimated Assets, 1 January 2005 $ 251,728

Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

The Groom’s Previous Lingering Relationship - OUP Bioinformatics

• Content – primarily methods• Impact factor 6+ increased +1 / year• After one year – free access to full articles• Low cost/free on-line in developing countries• On-line access to papers soon after acceptance• Recent survey indicated 70% supportive of open

access – up from 50% last summer

Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

The Courtship• OUP contract expiring end 2004• April 2004 RFP issued to

publishers• June 2004 13 publishers

responded with 15 options• July 2004 Board of Directors and

membership deeply divided over move to open access, loss of revenue also an issue

• A duel model favored• OUP not supportive of a ménage

de trois

• Sept. 2004 form partnership with PLoS CB

• Nov. 2004 former ISCB President and Chair of Publications Committee becomes EIC

• Jan. 2005 Launch with very strong EB

• Now 70 papers processed, 1500 signed up for early alerts

• June 2005 first issue at ISMB

Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

The Bride’s Unique Scope

• PLoS Computational Biology is published in partnership with the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) and features works of exceptional significance that furthers our understanding of living systems, at all scales, through the application of computational methods. Readers include life and computational scientists who can take the findings presented here to the next level of discovery.

Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

The Bride’s Aspirations• Quality, quality, quality• Papers pre-filtered with response in 2-3 days• High quality review in 4-6 weeks – 3+ reviews• Papers on-line soon after acceptance• Reviews• Perspectives• Lay summaries• Annotated references• Society pages

Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

The Marriage Thus Far

• Unresponsive Editors• JMS• Innovation slowed by

conventional requirements

• What happens when open access is the norm?

• Ground swell of support for open access

• PLoS are scientists!• Open to innovation• Feeling of a new

beginning

Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

When the Honeymoon is Over Marriage Is All About Growing Up Together

• Using the medium for more than just distribution:– Living tutorials (needed in a fast growing field)– Seminal lectures (video) with DOIs– New presentation methodologies e.g.

• Usable tables• Applets for review of specific types of data

– The Knowledge (journal article) and the data (database) become integrated in cyberspace

• The paper is the interface to the databases• The databases are the interfaces to the paper content

Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

The Children

• The Children (membership) are ideally suited for developing open source tools (BioLit) to support their parents– Support searching and literature mining – Authoring tools

Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

The Wood Anniversary

• Bring computational biologists working at different scales into contact through shared methodologies

• Have ISCB as the support organization for this broader membership

• Take more ownership for the dissemination of our science such that it be available without regard for geographic or economic boundaries

• Improve the comprehension of our science through the use of appropriate Web technologies

Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

Thank You

Any similarity to persons living or dead (or the Royal Family) is entirely

coincidental

Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

ISCB Membership / ISMB Attendance

Shows Significant Growth in 2004

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

Membership

Attendance

Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

1924 Total Members•US 834•UK 284 •Germany 129•Canada 86•Japan 53•S. Korea 46•Sweden 45

Less US CentricAlmost 40% Students

ISCB Membership Expands Globally

51 Countries Represented in 2004vs. 37 Previous Year

Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

Traditional Subscription Model Journals Offer Discounts to ISCB

MembersJournal Name Member Savings (USD)• Bioinformatics $ 375• Briefings in Bioinformatics 31• Briefings in Functional Genomics

& Proteomics 31• Combination BIB and FGP

(when ordered together) 94• Comparative & Functional Genomics 11• Computers in Biology and Medicine 143• Computer Methods and Programs in

Biomedicine 133• Human Genomics 16• Human Molecular Genetics 94• Journal of Biomedical Informatics 151• Journal of Computational Biology 234• OMICS 141

Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

PLoS Founding Board of Directors

Harold VarmusPLoS Co-founder and Chairman of the BoardPresident and CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Patrick O. BrownPLoS Co-founder and Board MemberHoward Hughes Medical Institute & Stanford University School of Medicine

Michael B. EisenPLoS Co-founder and Board MemberLawrence Berkeley National Laboratory & University of California at Berkeley

Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

PLoS – A Brief History

• Founded in October, 2000• Circulated an open letter urging publishers to

increase access to research literature • >30,000 signatories• Some positive effects, but overall response

from publishers fell short of demands• In December, 2002, $9million grant from

Moore Foundation to launch open access journals.

Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

PLoS Publishing Strategy• Launch two high quality open access

journals– PLoS Biology in October, 2003– PLoS Medicine in 2004

• Then launch more specialist open access journals

• Stimulate and partner with other organizations to do the same

Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

PLoS Biology - Year One

• Articles submitted – 757

• Articles published – 140

• Extensive media coverage

PLoS Biology is established as a high quality open access journal

Emerging Trends April 13, 2005

Current Editorial Board

• Sebastian Bonhoeffer

• Peer Bork • Chris Burge• Richard Durbin • Jonathan Eisen • David Eisenberg• Mark Gerstein• David Haussler• Steve Henikoff • David Hillis

• Peter Hunter• Simon Levin• Wen-Hsiung Li• Dianna Murray• Janet Thornton • Andrej Sali• Chris Sander• Arend Sidow