PLOS ONE online journal - credible?

[iowaguy]

If a professor publishes an article in the PLOS ONE online, open-access journal

 

www.plosone.org

 

does that basically mean that the article wasn't accepted for submission in the higher-prestige journals?  Thoughts?

[biotechie]

The articles is still reviewed before publication:
http://www.plosone.org/static/reviewerGuidelines;jsessionid=52CEE2CCDEDA2E71292F7C38C04144F5

 

Lots of people publish to PlosOne, and that's it. The article is published. I'm not sure why you would submit an already published article to be published again? My lab has two articles in PlosOne, and they've been cited 5 times more often in the 4 months they've been there than my other article in a more well-known journal that has been available for more than a year.

 

I've got probably 20 articles in my citations list for my thesis from there. I like PlosOne because it IS open access... it isn't going to be behind a pay wall, and I'm going to be able to access the papers. My professor is actually standing behind me jabbering about how he prefers PlosOne. More and more people from within my field are publishing there, and some of them are previously well published in really highly ranked journals.

 

I guess I should also mention that these are all medical research based articles for my field... and we can be a kindof picky bunch as far as how delicately we treat our research and how proud we are of it. We think our stuff is the best just like everyone else.

 

Now, if I had something incredibly ground-breaking? I'd go for Nature or a high ranked journal. If I have something that extends my current research, say, I've identified a new protein partner or something similar, I'm happy with PlosOne... and I feel like more people gain access.

Edited June 11, 2013 by biotechie

[Eigen]

PLOS ONE is definitely credible. My PI reviews for it, and I see a lot of good work in there. 

[rising_star]

Not in the hard sciences and still agree that PLoS One is totally credible and legit. It's harder to get into than quite a few other journals, it's peer-reviewed, etc.