In this recent blog post Michael Eisen, a co-founder of the Public Library of Science, lends credence to the notion that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. He wryly observes that he has derived “considerable pleasure … over the past year or so, as one traditional publisher after another has responded to the smashing success of PLoS One by launching direct ripoffs that seek to capitalize on the business model we have established.”
While obviously gratified, he also notes that some of these new journals are not following the equally important PLos One lead of “adopting the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY), which allows for unrestricted reuse and redistribution subject only to the constraint that the original authors and source be cited.” Instead they are “using exclusively (or in one case optionally) licenses that restrict commercial reuse or the generation of derivative works.” Mr. Eisen takes obvious exception to this.
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