Librarians’ Rx

From the Liblicense-l mailing list:

The first impact factor for PLoS Biology – 13.9.

The open-access journal PLoS Biology has been assessed by Thomson ISI to
have an impact factor of 13.9*, which places PLoS Biology among the most
highly cited journals in the life sciences. This is an outstanding
statistic for a journal less than two years old, from a new publisher
promoting a new business model to support open access to the scientific
and medical literature.

An impact factor of 13.9 places PLoS Biology above such established
journals as EMBO Journal, Current Biology, and the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences. In fact, in ISI’s category of general
biology journals, PLoS Biology is ranked number 1.

PLoS Biology was launched in October 2003, as an open-access home to the
very best in biological research. By any measure, the impact of this
launch was impressive. The on-line publication of the first issue was
accompanied by strong and favorable media coverage, and subsequent issues
continue to receive regular attention. Content from PLoS Biology has been
read, copied, redistributed, and reused, without restriction (aside from
proper citation of the authors), and now we know that the journal has also
been cited time and time again.

PLoS Biology was launched to provide biologists who support open access a
high profile journal for their best research papers and to demonstrate
that open-access publishing works for a selective journal that only
publishes outstanding science. Thanks to support from funding agencies,
librarians, open-access advocates, and the scientific community – in
particular, the editorial board members of PLoS Biology, the reviewers,
and most of all the authors who have submitted excellent work to a
fledgling journal – a substantial step has been taken toward these goals.

But there is still a long way to go before the mission of the Public
Library of Science – to make the world’s treasury of scientific and
medical literature a public resource – is fulfilled. We hope that PLoS
Biology’s first impact factor will inspire even greater support for PLoS
journals and for open access.

* Thompson ISI calculated the impact factors that it announced this year
by counting all the citations in 2004 to content that appeared in 2002 and
2003 and then dividing that number by the number of articles published in
2002 and 2003. For a long-standing journal, therefore, this number
reflects the mean (average) number of citations over the course of a year
to articles published over the two prior years. For PLoS Biology, this
number refers only to articles published in its first three issues in the
fall of 2003, which is why the initial impact factor is considered
preliminary.