Who's afraid of Open Data
Cartoon by John R. McKiernan, downloaded from: http://whyopenresearch.org/gallery.html I was at a small conference last year, catching up on gossip over drinks, and somehow the topic moved on to journals, and the pros and cons of publishing in different outlets. I was doing my best to advocate for open access, and to challenge the obsession with journal impact factors. I was getting the usual stuff about how early-career scientists couldn't hope to have a career unless they had papers in Nature and Science, but then the conversation took an interesting turn. "Anyhow," said eminent Professor X. "One of my postdocs had a really bad experience with a PLOS journal." Everyone was agog. Nothing better at conference drinks than a new twist on the story of evil reviewer 3. We waited for him to continue. But the problem was not with the reviewers. "Yup. She published this paper in PLOS Biology, and of course she signed all their forms. She then gave a talk about th...