Chris Surridge's blog

After all the coverage lavished on Nigel the Nigersaurus last week we were a little worried that this week’s crop of papers in PLoS ONE would be unfairly overlooked. That would be a great shame as there are lots of good papers published this week. Two are particularly ‘media friendly’ but which will prove the more popular?

PLoS ONE published a paper today. This might not sound very unusual but today is Thursday and PLoS ONE papers are usually published on a Wednesday (or to be precise late Tuesday in time for Wednesday). This paper however is a special case.

Today is my Birthday. I'm entering a prime of life, although I'm not going to tell you which one. I only mention this because PLoS ONE has given me an extra special gift. This day, my birthday as I may have mentioned, we accepted for publication our 1,000^th paper.

There is a wonderful editorial in Nature this week which I have to share with you. Apparently Nature has been getting complaints about the fact that they continue to print verbatim their 1869 mission statement which talks about “scientific men”. Obviously this is causing female scientists to conclude that they can’t submit work to Nature and giving them a feeling of guilt if they read its content which is so clearly not meant for them. Typography to the rescue!

A week can be a long time in politics; well, a year in scientific publishing can feel like an age. On 1st August last year, PLoS ONE opened its doors for submission and so we have decided to call today our official birthday. So what has the last year been like and how have things changed?