Open Access News

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Monday, April 13, 2009

Interview with a PLoS ONE editor

Bora Zivkovic, Academic Editor Interview - Adam Ratner, everyONE, April 6, 2009.

Adam Ratner, MD is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Microbiology at Columbia University. He is one of the first people to join the Editorial Board at PLoS ONE and is now our Section Editor for Infectious Diseases. We talked over Skype about medicine, Open Access, PLoS and the world of scientific publishing. ...

BZ: What was it that attracted you to PLoS ONE in the first place?

AR: I liked the idea of Open Access from the very beginning, especially when PLoS started its first journals - Biology and Medicine. When PLoS put out the call for manuscripts for its new journal - PLoS Pathogens - I persuaded my collaborators that we should support this journal and send our papers there. Actually, our paper, The Role of Innate Immune Responses in the Outcome of Interspecies Competition for Colonization of Mucosal Surfaces, was the very first article published in PLoS Pathogens - number 001.

The following year, when PLoS announced the founding of PLoS ONE, I was intrigued. ...

BZ: How does the peer-review process on PLoS ONE work? What is the standard of peer-review on PLoS ONE?

AR: In some ways, the review system in PLoS ONE is very similar to other journals in the areas of infectious diseases or microbiology, yet in other ways it is very different. The process is identical to other journals in that manuscripts are sent out to reviewers who do their job seriously and apply the same scientific standards to the work. On the other hand, it makes a huge difference that no manuscript is rejected early because “it is not of interest to us” - there are none of those limitations.

Thus, the reviewing process is rigorous - reviewers are evaluating if the work is hypothesis driven, is the work of high quality, and are conclusions supported by the data, but not trying to meet any subjective criteria. ...

BZ: What would you say is the ‘best’ paper you have handled and why?

AR: It is hard to choose, but I would like to point out a series of papers about tuberculosis in The Gambia. A group there is looking at sensitivity and specificity of TB tests on the ground, in a place where tuberculosis is highly prevalent. Look at, for instance, Surprisingly High Specificity of the PPD Skin Test for M. tuberculosis Infection from Recent Exposure in The Gambia and Using ELISPOT to Expose False Positive Skin Test Conversion in Tuberculosis Contacts. Those are important studies in themselves, but they also showcase the importance of Open Access in the developing world - both medical personnel and researchers there need access to the literature on the diseases that are prevalent in those parts of the world. ...

BZ: And finally, what would you say is the thing about Open Access that most excites you?

AR: There is a social justice aspect to Open Access that I find particularly compelling. Especially, as we just mentioned, in the international sphere: making sure that all the existing medical knowledge is available to physicians everywhere on the planet. ...