Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

Gah, so much interesting stuff going on and I simply have No. Time. To. Blog.

But I’m making an exception for PeerJ, a new OA journal that is coming online later this year. Like PLoS ONE, it will be an all-subject journal that will publish stuff based on scientific solidity rather than perceived sexiness, but so openly and so cheaply that it might make PLoS ONE look like an Elsevier product (I jest–put away your pitchforks, PLoS fans. [Elsevier fans, you can keep yours–gotta accessorize those forked tails somehow!]). They’ve got a special on right now: discounted lifetime memberships. The rates go up Sept. 1, which you’ll notice is not far off. You can read about the different membership plans here. I just purchased what they refer to as the Investigator Plan, and which I call the max bling membership.

Is this overkill? Quite likely. The Enhanced Plan would give me two pubs per year, which is, so far, as much as I would need at ALL scholarly outlets, let alone just one. And I don’t plan on only sending work to PeerJ once it’s up and running, although I will probably send them stuff often.

I went for the max bling membership mainly so I never have to think about it again. I don’t know if PeerJ will succeed like PLoS ONE or go extinct like you-know-who. I don’t know if I’ll ever publish more than two papers a year, period, let alone whether I’ll want to send more than two a year to PeerJ. And now I don’t have to worry about those things, or about upgrading my membership down the line, or about anything, really. I’m all in. Ninety bucks* to never have to make any PeerJ-related membership decisions for the rest of my life is a freakin’ steal. I wish I could pay off university committees the same way.

* The difference between the Enhanced and Investigator plans.

I’m sure we’ll have more to say about PeerJ, about how we think its genuinely post-scarcity and radically open approach to scientific publishing are, in fact, the wave of the future, but that will have to wait for other posts. In the meantime, I have shedloads of things to do, like interview prospective students and revise my human anatomy lectures and write my SVPCA talk. Happily, worrying about my PeerJ membership is not one of those things. Nor will it be. Ever.