CNET Says The inaugural issue of the journal, called the Public Library of Science Biology, is the first journal to be published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), a San Francisco nonprofit that’s backed by several highly regarded scientists who want to see scientific research freely distributed online.
Not surprisingly, the free distribution model seems be going over well. Within the first eight hours of the journal’s launch, traffic on the site spiked to more than half a million hits, said Nick Twyman, director of information technology and computer operations at PLoS. The traffic has overwhelmed the group’s servers, causing PLoS to direct visitors to other sites, where they can access simplified versions of the journal. Twyman said he hopes to get the site up and running again by Wednesday.
Slashdot was part of it
When I submitted an article on PLoS Monday, slashdot had a thread posted. It took me a good 2 hours to download the 65MB first issue of PLoS Biology. Normally I wouldn’t download the whole thing, but I needed it for a potential article. I expect plenty of researchers will download the whole journal rather than individual article, it’s just easier. Maybe they should consider a subscription price for CD-ROM delivery? It would save bandwidth and be a great archive.
Re:Slashdot was part of it
The whole point of PLoS is to make publicly funded research freely available to the public. I’m sure that once the traffic created by Slashdot calms down, there won’t be as many problems accessing the information.