More on PLoS ONE and Philica

Alicia Chang, Online journals challenge scientific peer review, Mercury News, October 1, 2006. A glimpse at PLoS ONE and Philica, focusing more on their methods of peer review than on their access policies.

Update. The Desert Sun (Palm Springs, California) has reprinted Chang's article but with a new headline and subtitle: Online journals threaten scientific review system: Internet sites publishing studies with little or no scrutiny by peers. The Gainesville Sun (Gainesville, Florida) goes further: Online publishing a threat to peer review. The Monterey Herald (Monterey, California) takes another step: Academic journals bypass peers, go to Web.

Of course, this isn't the first time that editors didn't read or didn't understand the articles they were supposed to capture with a headline. Chang's article is mostly devoted to peer-reviewed OA journals (though with a new form of peer peer review), not OA repositories (though she does give a paragraph to Grigory Perelman and arXiv). Is this routine editorial carelessness or spreading paranoia?

Update. Here's one more in the depressing series: Philadelphia's NBC10 reprinted the article under the title, Science Journals Challenge Peer-Reviewed Counterparts.