Redefining Publishing: PLOS receives multi-million-dollar grant funding for new research initiative

9 October, 2024

Below are extracts of a Grant and Award Announcement from PLOS, and a comment from me.

Read online: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1059918

SAN FRANCISCO —PLOS today announced that it has received a $1.5 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a $1 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to support our mission to drive Open Science forward with meaningful change in scholarly publishing. The funds enable PLOS to embark on an ambitious 18-month research and design project to explore how to tackle two barriers that exclude many researchers from meaningfully participating in Open Science: affordability and a lack of recognition for Open Science contributions in the research process. The goal of this project is to demonstrate outcomes for science that go ‘beyond the Article’ and build a business model that goes ‘beyond the Article Processing Charge (APC)’, highlighting that new solutions anchored in the principles of Open Science are feasible and can deliver tangible benefits for the entire research enterprise. PLOS seeks to be a catalyst in transforming publishing models and ensuring that science is open, recognized, and accessible to all.

'Today’s scholarly ecosystem still places an exclusive emphasis on the article. PLOS is committed to designing a new model of research publication that enables recognition of all research outputs and contributions... Driving meaningful change in Open Science requires collaboration across the research ecosystem.

“Open Science means research that’s more inclusive, equitable, and accessible,” said Nancy Barrand, Senior Advisor for Program Development, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “We’re excited to support this effort by PLOS to push the field in that direction by redesigning the publishing model for scientific papers to increase visibility, drive collaboration, and ultimately build a new system that’s more inclusive and participatory for early career researchers and diverse voices.”

COMMENT (NPW): It will be interesting to see how this develops. But the purpose is quite specific 'to explore how to tackle two barriers that exclude many researchers from meaningfully participating in Open Science' and 'ultimately build a new system that’s more inclusive and participatory for early career researchers and diverse voices'. They talk of 'collaboration across the research ecosystem'. Some definitions of 'research ecosystem' are quite specific to researchers and those with whom they react, whereas other definitions are more like the 'global evidence ecosystem' that we describe on HIFA.

From a HIFA perspective, the underlying purpose of the global evidence ecosystem is to meet people's needs for reliable, applicable healthcare information and thereby improve health outcomes. The system is not working and a tweak in the research element alone is not going to make a huge difference.

While innovative projects such as this PLOS initiative evolve, it is all the more important for us to complement these efforts with a wider view on the global evidence ecosystem. This is the central message of the recent HIFA Global Consultation where respondents worldwide (representing all six parts of the golobal evidece ecosystem) encouraged WHO to *explicitly* commit to universal access to reliable healthcare information and to convene stakeholders to develop a global strategy to accelerate progress.

https://www.hifa.org/news/lancet-global-health-supports-championing-role...

Such a global strategy would help inform (and be informed by) more specific initiatives such as that described above. We need to see the wood for the trees.

HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org