PLoStitution

I went to two talks yesterday about PLoS ONE, an exciting new project by the Public Library of Science. I’m thrilled to see PLoS moving in this direction.

During his talk, Chris Surridge mentioned that the the publishing platform/CMS that PLoS ONE is using is based on Fedora. I mentioned that Fedora, last I checked, wasn’t exactly a CMS, a fact that he acknowledged but responded to by saying that I would need to talk to their tech team for details.

Today I found out that neither ideological affinity nor geographic proximity to Red Hat kept the University of Virginia from choosing the wrong name for their Institutional Repository (IR) software. But at least yesterday’s confusion is put to rest.

Also, Surridge had a slide with this quote and challenged the audience to come up with the utterer:

The most valuable commodity I know of is information.

I did a quick "I’m feeling lucky" search and was thrilled to see that I came up with this page informing me that I, "do not have rights to view the article" containing the answer but that the information could be mine for a cool GBP £13.00 (plus a handling charge of GBP £1.50 and VAT where applicable).

The phrase, it turns out, belongs to Gordon Gekko, a corporate raider character in the 1987 film Wall Street.

Finally, and least importantly, I object to this image:

/copyrighteous/images/openaccess20.gif

4 Replies to “PLoStitution”

  1. Actually, they’ve been using the name Fedora since 1997, and it’s Red Hat who started using the name in 2003. Shades of Firebird.

  2. Why do you object to the image? Because it implies that the natural state of scientific works is “locked”, and that unlocking them requires some effort or a project? Is it the over-used “2.0” idiom? Is it the fact that if you turn it sideways the lock looks vaguely like a penis and testicles?

  3. Evan,

    Mostly the 2.0 bit. You can’t, or at least shouldn’t, break down social movements into major and minor version numbers. It’s bad enough with software.

    I had not thought of the last but I’ll oppose it for that reasons to. ;)

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