[nfais-l] PeerJ Launches

Tue Jun 12 16:13:39 EDT 2012

By now you may have heard buzz about the PeerJ platform/service formally announced today; the service is launching with two prongs, PeerJ and PeerJ Preprints. The former is referred to as being an open-access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal, focusing on Biology and Medical Science while the latter is described as being a preprints server, similar to arXiv. (See [http://blog.peerj.com/post/24952567807/peerj-launch] http://blog.peerj.com/post/24952567807/peerj-launch)

The business model is a membership pyramid model, Basic, Enhanced, and Investigator. According to the press release, "All member plans confer lifetime rights, and the three tiers allow members to publish once, twice or an unlimited number of times per year in PeerJ." Those membership tiers are priced respectively at $99, $169, and $259. To publish in PeerJ, all authors of an article must be a paid member of the service. The membership carries with it as well an obligation to do peer-review. Nature's story on the launch indicates that "every PeerJ member is required each year to review at least one paper or participate in post-publication peer review. (see [http://www.nature.com/news/journal-offers-flat-fee-for-all-you-can-publish-1.10811] http://www.nature.com/news/journal-offers-flat-fee-for-all-you-can-publish-1.10811). The founders claim that this is significantly lower in cost than similar OA journals. (See interview with Jason Hoyt on the Mendeley blog: [http://blog.mendeley.com/open-access/an-interview-with-the-founders-of-peerj-an-innovative-new-academic-publishing-startup/] http://blog.mendeley.com/open-access/an-interview-with-the-founders-of-peerj-an-innovative-new-academic-publishing-startup/)

The PeerJ Preprints service is described by ArsTechnica as follows: "PeerJ's involvement can, at the authors' choice, also start well before a paper is submitted for review. The journal will run a preprint server where researchers can place drafts and works-in-progress—common practice in the physics community, but not yet popular among biologists. Binfeld says PeerJ hopes to make the practice more appealing by giving users fine-grained control over sharing, letting them limit who has access to papers prior to publication. Authors also get the chance to share the title and/or abstract, which Binfeld suggested can help authors claim precedence for being the first to report some results."

While media coverage claims that the PeerJ journal will be indexed by all major services, what this really means is that that non-fee based services such as Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic Research will be indexing the articles at the services initial publication time (expected to be December 2012). Selective indexing services who may require certain benchmarks of performance will not be picking up PeerJ until those criteria have been met.

Additional coverage may be found at:

(1) Library Journal [http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2012/06/publishing/new-open-access-academic-publisher-promises-to-revolutionize-business-model/] http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2012/06/publishing/new-open-access-academic-publisher-promises-to-revolutionize-business-model/

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/12/peerj-oreilly-open-access-publishing_n_1589638.html] (2) Science Magazine [http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/06/new-open-access-journal-lets-sci.html] http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/06/new-open-access-journal-lets-sci.html

(3) Huffington Post  [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/12/peerj-oreilly-open-access-publishing_n_1589638.html] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/12/peerj-oreilly-open-access-publishing_n_1589638.html

(4) Ars Technica [http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/new-open-access-journal-aims-to-disrupt-scholarly-publishing/] http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/new-open-access-journal-aims-to-disrupt-scholarly-publishing/

(5) The Chronicle of Higher Ed [http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/new-publishing-venture-gives-researchers-control-over-access/36651] http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/new-publishing-venture-gives-researchers-control-over-access/36651

(6) PeerJ- A Brave New World, Occam's Typewriter [http://occamstypewriter.org/scurry/2012/06/12/peerj-brave-new-world/] http://occamstypewriter.org/scurry/2012/06/12/peerj-brave-new-world/

All provide additional details about the service.

Jill O'Neill
Director, Planning & Communication
NFAIS
Email: jilloneill at nfais.org
Voice: 215/893-1561
Web: [http://www.nfais.org] http://www.nfais.org

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