Dear Mark and Trevor,

It is great to know that you are considering submitting to PLoS ONE. It is also good that you have given me an excuse to answer these questions. You are not the only people to be asking them.

First up, yes the pre-publication assessment of papers is definitely ‘peer-review’. Papers once submitted will be assigned to an academic editor who is familiar with the field covered by the paper. That editor will then make the decision as to whether the paper meets the editorial criteria of PLoS ONE. The editor might be able to do this based on his or her own knowledge, they might need to consult with other members of the editorial board, they might need to solicit formal reports from independent referees; basically as much or as little review as they need to make the decision on publication. The difference with PLoS ONE is not with the process but rather that the emphasis is placed more on objective technical issues than subjective selection.

I’m not sure that I follow your second question. Scientific papers are always the subject of discussion. That discussion occurs in coffee rooms and conferences, it occurs in subsequent papers and in reviews. These discussion though are disconnected from the papers themselves. With PLoS ONE we hope to capture the discussions that are sparked by a paper and make them available to all readers. If that means that publications are permanent ‘discussion papers’ then that is making the literature more closely reflect the actual process of scientific advance.

As far as PLoS ONE’s relationship with the other PLoS journals go it is an independent entity. PLoS ONE will receive submission and publish those that meet its editorial criteria. There is no question of PLoS ONE being some form of antechamber to the other journals. We will be providing ways for the community of readers to identify those papers that they feel are particularly important or influential but these are PLoS ONE papers and always will be.

Equally papers are not going to be ‘handed down’ from the other PLoS journals. There are things that we can do to make submission of papers rejected by other PLoS journals easier than submitting elsewhere but that is no different from what happens right now within the PLoS family of journals (see for example PLoS Medicine's editorial policies). Some papers will be submitted to PLoS ONE in this way but this is neither the only, nor the major route to submitting to PLoS ONE. PLoS ONE is an autonomous publication which exists in its own right, and exists in parallel with the traditional ‘hierarchy’ of journals.

Will PLoS ONE eventually replace current journals? I guess that it might in time. I certainly feel that PLoS ONE’s publishing model has many advantages over the current system of journal publishing. I think that in a small number of years many journals will adopt the policies being pioneered by PLoS ONE. But if you are asking whether there is a plan to fold the other PLoS journals into PLoS ONE then the answer is a resounding ‘NO’.

Better not to get me started on ISI and Impact Factors, suffice it to say that ISI is a law unto themselves and I can’t start to guess what they will do in regard to PLoS ONE, just as I can’t guess whether they would index any new journal. Quite honestly we can’t tell, and ISI won’t make up its mind until the journal is up and running in any case.

What is more certain is that PLoS ONE papers will be archived in PubMed Central so between that and Google Scholar we think that PLoS ONE papers will be pretty visible no matter what ISI decides to do.