One summer a few years ago, Dara O’Rourke was doing what he’d done dozens of times before: putting sunscreen on his five-year old daughter Minju before she went outside to play in the summer sun. The thought occurred to Dara, "I wonder what’s really in this stuff?" So, being a Professor at the University of California-Berkeley, Dara researched the sunscreen. What he found was surprising and disturbing: the sunscreen he’d been putting on Minju for years had a toxic ingredient.

You can listen to an interview on the NetSquared Podcast by Net Tuesday podcaster, David Collin, with two folks from the Public Library of Science: Richard Cave, IT Director, and Barbara Cohen, Executive Editor of PLoS Publications & Senior Editor of PLoS Medicine.  You can also listen to their presentation and follow along on their PowerPoint by downloading it here.

Richard Cave and Barbara Cohen from the Public Library of Science gave an awesome presentation at Net Tuesday San Francisco about open access publishing of scientific literature, and the launch of PLoS ONE. PLoS ONE is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access, online publication that features reports of primary research from all disciplines within science and medicine, and allows readers to create annotations and discussions. You can download the PowerPoint of their presentation here.

For more info on PLoS ONE's technical background, click here.  I'll let you know when the podcast of their presentation and interview is posted on the NetSquared Podcast.

Cave ended the presentation with a call to action:
• Express support for the Federal Research Public Access Act
• Learn about and contribute your ideas to their work in progress on the PLoS Blog.
• Read about and share new research, sign up for eTOC alerts here.
• Spread the word.
• Surprise them by using their content in ways they could not have imagined