PLOS ONE: career suicide?

The biggest news to academic publishing recently is probably the release of impact factor (IF) by Thomson Reuters. The famous OA journal PLOS ONE received its biggest drop in IF and is expected to fall even lower.

There has been various discussions about PLOS ONE, for example here at Early Career Ecologists. There must be some reason why the authors decide to publish there, be it timing issue or being frustrated by the long peer-review process.

Some claim (it should be in fact) that quality of each article should be assessed independently, instead of using the impact of the journal to be a proxy. However, PLOS ONE may really be a career suicide, especially junior faculty (at least in my place). The following real scenario say it all.

An anonymous source from the Grant Panel meeting. A panel chair assessed some grant proposals, went over the PI's CV, spotted 3 PLOS ONE articles. Without going into any detail, he said something badly about the competence of the PI, like "This guy does not make quality science". I don't know the final outcome of the proposal, but it didn't look good.

Face the truth in Hong Kong. Only tenured professors can play the PLOS ONE game.