STM Publishing: Public Library of Science Launches PLOS Labs, Help Them Develop Disruptive Products and Ideas
From the Official PLOS Blog:
We’re excited to announce a new group at PLOS called PLOS Labs, which we created to develop disruptive ideas and products for science communication. We will be putting software prototypes in front of researchers to gather feedback on both the concepts and implementation, and coordinating open-source development projects to implement many of these ideas. We would love to have you join this effort – please sign up to participate.
[PLOS Labs] exists to take disruptive ideas and turn them in to tangible products, and is eager to work with our community of authors, editors and reviewers to make sure we do this right. PLOS Labs is also interested in forming partnerships with inventive individuals, organizations and publishers, large and small.
Sign up to opt-in to our evaluation pool. For each project, we will select individuals and email you instructions on how you can help. Testing will generally involve using product prototypes and then answering some questions. Some users we’ll be calling by phone or video chat, or inviting into our SF offices for deeper discussions (if you opt in for that level of participation). Each online experiment will take no more than 30 minutes of your time, some as few as 5 minutes, and we’ll ask for volunteers who can give more time responding to us by phone and video chat.
PLOS Labs is led by Jonathan Dugan, who has worked extensively with technology start-ups, remains active in the vibrant Bay Area venture community, and teaches entrepreneurship. We’re looking forward to doing what we do best: working with scientists to innovate and make research work better so that together we can continue to fulfill the PLOS mission of leading a transformation in research communication.
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About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.