[GOAL] PLOS CEO takes up new position at the African Academy of Sciences

[Richard Poynder]

On December 21st, The Scientist announced that PLOS CEO Elizabeth Marincola has taken up a new position as Senior Advisor Science Communication and Advocacy at the African Academy of Sciences (AAS).

PLOS Chief Financial Officer Richard Hewitt has, therefore, taken over as interim CEO from January 1st.

Marincola's departure comes at a time when PLOS faces growing competitive pressure. Last September, for instance, it was reported that Nature's megajournal Scientific Reports had overtaken PLOS' "cash cow" PLOS ONE in terms of the number of articles published.

Separately Elsevier has announced (2014) that it plans to partner with a number of African organisations, including the African Academy of Sciences, to create a new African megajournal (modelled, presumably, on PLOS ONE).

A number of questions arise:


  1.  What, if anything, does Marincola's move tell us about PLOS and its future?


On 27th December, The Scientist published a short Q&A with Marincola. One of the questions asked was where she saw PLOS' place in the OA publishing marketplace. Marincola began her reply by saying:

"The first and primary mission of PLOS when it was founded was to make the case that open-access publishing could be a sustainable business, whether in a nonprofit environment or a for-profit environment. So the very fact we have a lot of competition now is extremely satisfying to us and it is, in itself, a major part of our vision. As Harold Varmus said when he cofounded PLOS, if we could put ourselves out of business because the whole world becomes open-access STM publishing, that would be the greatest testament to our achievements."


  1.  Will Marincola be helping to create Elsevier's new African megajournal?



  1.  How appropriate/useful is it for publishers from the Global North to be developing scholarly communication solutions for the Global South?

More here:

http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/promoting-open-access-in-africa.html

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