PLOS

PLOS
Public Library of Science · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Name	Public Library of Science
Founded	2000
Founders	Harold Varmus; Patrick O. Brown; Michael Eisen
Headquarters	San Francisco, California
Type	Nonprofit publisher
Focus	Open access scientific publishing

PLOS

PLOS is a nonprofit open-access publisher founded in 2000 by Harold Varmus, Patrick O. Brown, and Michael Eisen with the aim of transforming access to scientific literature. It operates a suite of journals and advocacy initiatives that intersect with institutions such as the Wellcome Trust, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and engages scholarly communities including contributors associated with Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Oxford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of California, Berkeley.

History

PLOS originated in response to debates involving stakeholders like National Institutes of Health, Smithsonian Institution, and editors from established publishers including Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Wiley, amid early-2000s movements such as the Budapest Open Access Initiative and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access. Early milestones involved correspondence among founders and allies at institutions such as GenBank collaborators and proponents from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, leading to the launch of flagship journals in 2003 that paralleled initiatives by BioMed Central and advocacy from figures connected to Open Society Foundations. Subsequent developments included expansions of editorial boards drawing members from Royal Society, National Academy of Sciences, and partnerships with repositories akin to PubMed Central and policy dialogues with funders like the Wellcome Trust.

Organizational structure and governance

Governance of the organization has involved a board including leaders with affiliations to institutions such as American Association for the Advancement of Science, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Kaiser Permanente, and university administrators from Yale University and Columbia University. Executive roles have been filled by individuals previously associated with organizations like Nature Publishing Group and The Lancet editorial teams, while advisory committees have included scientists from Salk Institute, Rockefeller University, and legal advisors with experience at entities like Creative Commons and national funding agencies including European Research Council. Financial oversight has reported relationships with grant-making bodies and institutional library consortia such as the Directory of Open Access Journals stakeholders and nonprofit accounting practices common to foundations like MacArthur Foundation.

Publishing model and journals

The publisher operates a portfolio of journals that were among early large-scale open-access venues, contemporaneous with titles from Genome Research and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The portfolio includes multidisciplinary and subject-specific titles that attract manuscripts from authors at institutions such as Johns Hopkins University, Imperial College London, University of Cambridge, University of Tokyo, and Peking University. Editorial processes have involved academic editors drawn from societies like the American Chemical Society and panels with reviewers who have held positions at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and pharmaceutical research units in companies such as Pfizer and Roche. The organization has experimented with post-publication commentary, data-availability mandates reminiscent of practices at Nature Communications and coordinated policies with infrastructures like Dryad and Figshare.

Open access policies and licensing

The publisher implemented article-processing charge (APC) mechanisms and embraced licensing frameworks promoted by entities such as Creative Commons, aligning with model policies advanced by the Berkeley Initiative for Open Access and consultations with legal scholars from Yale Law School and Harvard Law School. Licensing choices mirror options used in collaborations with funders including the Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust and interface with mandates enforced by agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the European Commission. The organization’s policy set influenced library negotiations involving consortia such as Jisc and informed national open-access strategies in governments from United Kingdom and Germany.

Impact, reception, and criticisms

The organization’s journals have been cited in work from researchers affiliated with CERN, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Scripps Research, Broad Institute, and have influenced reproducibility discussions alongside initiatives such as the Reproducibility Project and reporting guidelines from groups like CONSORT and PRISMA. Praise has come from advocates connected to Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association and from librarians at institutions including New York Public Library and University of Toronto for expanding access relative to paywalled titles from Elsevier and Springer. Criticisms have targeted APC models and equity issues raised by scholars at University of Cape Town, University of Nairobi, and Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and have been debated in venues like Science Translational Medicine and commentaries appearing in The Lancet. Concerns also addressed peer-review practices and editorial decisions involving contributors from industry partners such as Johnson & Johnson and Novartis, prompting dialogue with standards bodies including Committee on Publication Ethics and initiatives like Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines.

Category:Open access publishing organizations