In the News

A number of papers published in PLoS ONE in 2008 have been featured in some recent round-ups of the year's best—and quirkiest—research. From worm grunting to an explanation for the superior sound of Stradivarius violins compared with modern violins, as ever, the highlighted articles cover a wide range of different scientific disciplines and topics.

Publication bias became a big blogging topic recently as a PLoS Medicine paper was picked up by several influential sites. Lisa Bero and colleagues found that a quarter of trials submitted to the Food and Drug Administration between 2001 and 2002 in support of new drugs applications remain unpublished a year after the fact. The study also found that among the published results, unexplained discrepancies between the FDA submission and the published studies tended to lead to more favourable presentations of the drugs.

A Health in Action paper published in PLoS Medicine recently describes the success of an innovative project called inSPOT – an e-card notification system that enables people who have been diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease to inform their sexual partners that they may also be at risk.

Jeremy Farrar, from the Centre for Tropical Medicine, Oxford University, Oxford, U.K. and the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam has published seven articles with PLoS ONE which makes him one of our most frequently published authors.

PLoS (in the form of myself) took a little time off last week to attend the press opening of the California Academy of Sciences, and got a sneak peek of their brand new, completely re-designed, and all-around very shiny aquarium, natural history museum, and planetarium.