1.Taxonomy Analysis to Support Key Decision Making Helen Atkins Director, Publishing Services 11 February 2014 1

2. Overview Some background on PLOS Goals of the project Historic data indexing Analysis of coverage over time Visualizing the results Decision support Additional projects in process or planning Next years presentation topic? 3. Who is PLOS? Ten years old The largest not-for-profit Open Access publisher 4,500 submissions per month The publisher of seven Open Access journals Based in San Francisco, US, and Cambridge, UK Self-sustaining since late 2010 3 4. 4 PLOS Biology October, 2003 PLOS Medicine October, 2004 PLOS Community Journals June-September, 2005 October, 2007 PLOS ONE December, 2006 5. PLOS ONE: The Worlds First Mega-journal 5 Editorial criteria Scientifically rigorous Ethical Properly reported Conclusions supported by the data Editors and reviewers do not ask How important is the work? Which is the relevant audience? Everything that deserves to be published, will be published Therefore, the journal is not artificially limited in size Use online tools to sort and filter scholarly content after publication, not before 6. Goals of the Project Identify areas of strength for each journal Confirm journals scopes against actual coverage Identify areas of emerging growth Shifting from original scope? Opportunities for new development, expansion? Using data on patterns of general literature growth, determine: Where are we strong compared to the market? Where might we be lagging behind? 6 7. Historic Indexing Project was developed with Access Innovations Using the PLOS taxonomy Indexed PLOS published articles from 2007 through June, 2013 85,000 PLOS records Indexed a large commercial A&I database 25,000,000 records 7 8. Visualizing the Results Partnered with Kevin Boyack and Map of Science to develop visual representations of the data Very high-level look at the results for PLOS ONE 8 9. THESAURUS BASEMAP Circle size - # documents Circle color top level term Many small circles detailed thesaurus and rule base that differentiates Few large circles broad terms and rule base that doesnt differentiate 10. ANALYSES PLoS One All years PLoS One (2008) PLoS One (2009) PLoS One (2010) PLoS One (2011) PLoS One (2012) PLoS One (2013) 11. ANALYSES PLoS One All years PLoS One (2008) PLoS One (2009) PLoS One (2010) PLoS One (2011) PLoS One (2012) PLoS One (2013) 12. ANALYSES PLoS One All years PLoS One (2008) PLoS One (2009) PLoS One (2010) PLoS One (2011) PLoS One (2012) PLoS One (2013) 13. ANALYSES PLoS One All years PLoS One (2008) PLoS One (2009) PLoS One (2010) PLoS One (2011) PLoS One (2012) PLoS One (2013) 14. ANALYSES PLoS One All years PLoS One (2008) PLoS One (2009) PLoS One (2010) PLoS One (2011) PLoS One (2012) PLoS One (2013) 15. ANALYSES PLoS One All years PLoS One (2008) PLoS One (2009) PLoS One (2010) PLoS One (2011) PLoS One (2012) PLoS One (2013) 16. ANALYSES PLoS One (2007-2011) PLoS One (2008) PLoS One (2009) PLoS One (2010) PLoS One (2011) PLoS One (2012) PLoS One (2013) 17. Analysis of Coverage Over Time Spreadsheet data analysis Where is the literature growing faster than average? Is PLOS ONE coverage also growing? If not, Are we missing opportunities? Are these areas out of current scope? Areas of strength in coverage Also added to our coverage analysis data on online use, citation rates, acceptance rates, and other metrics Emerging growth areas Where is PLOS ONE coverage growing faster than its overall growth? 17 18. Decision Support Editorial Is stated scope solid? Does it need to be updated, expanded, revised? Expanding areas may need increased support Marketing Campaigns to increase submissions in selected areas Identify conferences to attend to increase exposure to potential authors/editors 18 19. Decision Support - Example Ecology & Environmental Sciences 9% of all ONE articles have been tagged as Ecol/Env Sci Areas accounting for the most articles are in the level 2 topics listed below. Although it is still a small portion of the journal overall, this is a general area of growth in ONE. Community ecology: community structure, food web structure Ecosystems: forests, deserts Microbial ecology Paleoecology Physiological ecology Population ecology Opportunities for growth where ONE growth is slow relative to the literature: Agroecology Coastal ecology Conservation genetics Environmental economics Nature-society interactions Systems ecology 19 20. Additional Applications in the Works Using taxonomic analysis To help identify submissions likely to be rejected To match people (editors, reviewers) and manuscripts 20