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PLoS asks reviewers to check correctness, but not significance; for that reason it is hard to compare it with other journals. This makes it easier to publish papers outside the orthodoxy, which is usually a good thing.
While PLoS is technically not-for-profit, it is an incredible cash cow: the page charges are almost $1500, and they publish 20-30,000 papers/year. I can’t even imagine what they are doing with all that dough.
Most authors do not pay the page charges at PLoS ONE, so your accounting is inaccurate.
As someone who has both reviewed and published at PLoS ONE (and PLoS Medicine), your characterization is more or less semantic bunk.
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Sigh.
I’m generally sympathetic to your points.
And yet you provide no evidence.
Page charges are usually paid by grants and institutions, not authors, but if that is not what you mean then maybe you can clarify with some better numbers.
As someone who has both reviewed and published at PLoS ONE (and PLoS Medicine), your characterization is more or less semantic bunk.
The exact wording of their instructions is:
Unlike many journals which attempt to use the peer review process to determine whether or not an article reaches the level of ‘importance’ required by a given journal, PLOS ONE uses peer review to determine whether a paper is technically rigorous and worthy of inclusion in the published scientific record.
(They the list “seven editorial criteria”, which anyone can read here.) You might disagree with PLoS One as to what the PLoS One guidelines are, but that’s what they claim they are.
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Neither do you for your contention that
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Frequently waived.
Like I said: semantic bunk. For profit journals typically ask reviewers to rate how important a prospective article is to their readership, and some will also ask the reviewers to rate how big of an impact they expect the research to make. That is a minuscule component of a competent review, and has more to do with editors assessing a manuscript’s fit with the specific journal. It has about zilch to do with the substantive merits of the submission, which are addressed, and contested in the substance of a review.
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I love how Zinnia Jones had been involved in the take down of this ROGD crap and now all the TERFs are obsessing over her porn photos and stuff. Like I never seen this level of analysis done on porn like… ever. 
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To paraphrase Enrico Fermi, ROGD isn’t even wrong. It doesn’t even address dysphoria at all.
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The scientists most involved in this area released a statement:
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They’ve been “studying” her porn for years. Rather exhaustively. I wonder if Alex Jones is one of their researchers.
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According to her website- this is Littman’s only publication on this issue. She has zero interaction or experience with the community she purports to describe - or with other providers experienced in this area - and yet somehow is able to describe a whole new diagnosis out of thin air.
I’ll have what she’s smoking!
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that’s it, it’s like the physics quote-- “that’s not right. it’s not even wrong.”
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Apparently not so frequently. PLoS One grossed $39 million in page charges in 2016 (the most recent financial statement I could find), and returned around $2 million in “publication fee assistance” (the waiver). So around 5% of the time.
Like I said: semantic bunk . For profit journals typically ask reviewers to rate how important a prospective article is to their readership…It has about zilch to do with the substantive merits of the submission
As the Editor in Chief of a society-connected open journal (we neither charge for access nor assess page charges), I can say that reviewer-assessed importance is the second largest reason we reject papers. (The first is desk-rejection of papers which are either clearly outside our scope or have very obvious problems.) I wouldn’t argue that it is better (or worse) than the PLoS model, but it is assuredly different.
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Open access is fine. Paying to be published is not. No reputable open access peer-reviewed journal charges authors to publish their work.
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This is exactly what these transphobes are doing. They are desparate to keep the binary going at all costs and Littman is just one of the players in their game. She’s connected to Bailey and Blanchard, with Blanchard being the jackass who came up with autogynephilia. They have no honesty or integrity, part of Blanchard’s argument against trans lesbians, bisexuals, or asexuals (those who he lables as autogynephiles) are lying about their life and experiences. This whole lot are just absolutely awful people.
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Only for my second puberty. The first one was hell.
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Huh. This may be disciplinary, but—(desk rejections aside, obviously I don’t review those :)—none of the rejections I have seen of papers I have reviewed have been for “how important an article was rated.” Editors consistently comb together the weight of the reviewers’ responses, especially noting the weight of deficits that cannot easily be mended.
The 5% figure is surprising to me, the last time I recall checking their figures, there was an emphasis on waivers. Now I am curious about where that $39 million goes…
Obligatory:
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When I browsed the article, the ensuing shit storm seemed inevitable… Yet I thought there was an interesting mechanism being described, regardless of whether you class it as a “disease”.
The gender binary is woefully inadequate to contain all natural human sexual behavior, yet we don’t (yet) have a robust way to describe consensus beliefs that are deeply harmful, not in terms of disease. So Racism and Warfare somehow slip through the cracks of western thought, and it’s the victims of these phenomena that get medical lables like “lynching victim” or Ptsd patient.
The way I read the paper, kids are communicating with each other about a real thing (broken gender binary) and that makes it easier for the kids who are being sold short, to recognize what’s happening. The fix is not pills or surgery, it’s a broadening of consensus reality. But “normal” people would prefer everyone else live smaller lives to prevent those who matter from feeling discomfort.
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