There’s a new journal in town and it’s called PeerJ with a subject focus on biological and medical sciences.  What makes this open access journal and its companion, PeerJ PrePrints so different is their membership model – this one’s for life!  There are three pricing plans which include Basic, Enhanced, and Investigator, and each one offers a different level targeted to a specific audience – Graduate Students, Post-Docs, and Lab Heads or High-Volume Authors. Having a membership will not guarantee publication; all articles must go through peer review and meet a basic standard of scientific quality.

There was plenty of buzz in the blogosphere about this innovative approach to open access by co-founders Peter Binfield (former Publisher, PLoS ONE), and Jason Hoyt (former Chief Scientist/VP of R&D, Mendeley). Below are a few of the announcements I found:

• Journal offers flat fee for ‘all you can publish’
• New OA Journal, Backed by O’Reilly, May Disrupt Academic Publishing
• PeerJ Launches with a New Business Model for Open Access Publishing
• PeerJ, Tim O’Reilly-Backed Open Access Journal, Challenges Academic Publishing Giants
• Scholarly Publishing 2012: Meet PeerJ

To test the waters, researchers can sign up for a free account and then when they are ready can decided which membership best suits their situation.  Once you establish membership, there is no limit to the number of articles you can submit for publication.

An interesting option is the ability to gain valuable insights about your paper by using their pre-print service (PeerJ PrePrints).  According to their Website, submission is free for members and you have the ability to choose how visible your work is to the wider world.  In addition, you’ll receive a private link that you can share with anyone who is not a member of PeerJ.  The advantage of using PeerJ PrePrints is the opportunity to receive feedback from other members as well as use the service to edit and revise your work until you feel ready to submit to PeerJ.

PeerJ requires each paying member to provide one review per year which could be as simple as to comment on an article or more time consuming such as reviewing a pre-publication before it is submitted to PeerJ.  The goal is to encourage engagement within the membership community.

With any new publishing model and approach, what will be more interesting is not what we read today but rather what we will read a year from now.  I can’t wait to hear what our authors will be saying about PeerJ and PeerJ PrePrints.

Donna Gibson
Director of Library Services