Publishing

PLoS Medicine invited Richard Smith, former editor of the BMJ and
current board member of PLoS, to discuss an essay published this week by Neal Young, John Ioannidis and Omar Al-Ubaydli that argues that the current system of publication in biomedical research provides a distorted view of the reality of scientific data.

PLoS Pathogens is getting ready for Prion 2008 (Madrid, Spain, October 8-10), where you’ll find us at Booth 6 in the exhibition area of the Auditorium Hotel.

Last week, co-authors Jürgen Richt and S. Mark Hall published a groundbreaking article in PLoS Pathogens related to mad cow disease.

Today marks the publication of a special neuroscience Review in PLoS Computational Biology that we expect will become a key reference work. Gustavo Deco, Viktor K. Jirsa, Peter A. Robinson, Michael Breakspear, and Karl Friston present the results of several years of collaboration in response to a challenge posed at a Brain Connectivity Workshop to define and clarify the true meanings and usage of models in constant, but approximate use. Terms such as mean-field approximations, mass-action, neural-mass models, neural-field models, density-dynamics, etc. were in regular use but in undefined ways. This article tries to address how different models, used to simulate and predict observed brain dynamics, can be traced back to their common fundaments. In an accompanying Editorial also published today, Karl Friston, PLoS Computational Biology’s neuroscience editor, explains the origin and purpose of the article, which should standardise many concepts for some time.

PLoS and the Max Planck Society (MPS) have recently established an agreement whereby open access publication fees in PLoS journals will be paid directly by the MPS for articles from researchers at Max Planck Institutes.