From Academic Journals Open to Change:
In October 2000, Eisen, Brown and Harold Varmus, a former director of the National Institutes of Health, co-founded the Public Library of Science, or PLoS, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making scientific and medical research available online, free from government or corporate control. Two years later they received $9 million to create a nonprofit scientific publishing venture.So far, PLoS has launched two online science journals — PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine — with plans for three more in the coming months, covering genetics, pathogens and computational biology.
All of them are run by experts in their fields and require rigorous peer review, just like any other respectable academic journal. There are a few key differences, though. PLoS journals are free and allow authors to retain their copyrights, as long as they allow their work to be freely shared and distributed (with full credit given, naturally). They also require that authors pay $1,500 from their grants, or directly from their sponsors or institutions, to have their work published.