PLOS (publisher)

PLOS (publisher)
Name	PLOS
Founded	2000
Country	United States
Headquarters	San Francisco, California
Publications	Academic journals
Topics	Science, Medicine, Biology

PLOS (publisher) is an international nonprofit open-access publisher founded in 2000 that develops, publishes, and advocates for peer-reviewed scientific and medical literature. It operates a portfolio of journals and platforms that serve researchers across fields such as biology, medicine, ecology, computational science, and public health. The organization has influenced debates in scholarly communication, policy, and research assessment involving institutions, funders, and professional societies.

History

PLOS was launched amid debates involving Human Genome Project, National Institutes of Health, Wellcome Trust, European Commission, and advocacy from figures associated with open access movements such as proponents aligned with initiatives like the Budapest Open Access Initiative, Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, and organizations including SPARC and Creative Commons. Founders and early proponents included researchers and commentators who had interacted with institutions like Harvard University, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and funding agencies such as the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The first flagship journals emerged during the same decade that saw launches of titles from established publishers such as Nature Publishing Group, Elsevier, Springer Science+Business Media, and Wiley-Blackwell, amid controversies highlighted by episodes like the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property and policy shifts at bodies such as the National Institutes of Health and Wellcome Trust.

Mission and Open Access Model

PLOS’s mission emphasizes universal access similar to principles espoused by the Budapest Open Access Initiative and the Berlin Declaration. It adopted licensing aligned with Creative Commons Attribution terms to enable reuse by educators linked to institutions such as University of California, University of Oxford, and University of Cambridge, and to support mandates from funders like the Wellcome Trust and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The publisher engages in policy dialogues with entities including the National Science Foundation, European Research Council, and national ministries such as UK Research and Innovation to shape requirements comparable to those in policies from the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy and frameworks influenced by the Plan S coalition of funders.

Journals and Publications

PLOS’s portfolio includes flagship journals that cover broad and specialized areas comparable in scope to periodicals produced by The Lancet, Science (journal), Cell (journal), and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Titles in the portfolio span disciplines represented at conferences like the Society for Neuroscience, Ecological Society of America, and American Medical Association meetings. The publisher has launched community and megajournals that mirror formats used by platforms such as Frontiers (publisher), BioMed Central, and archives like arXiv; it also produces article-level metrics comparable to initiatives from Altmetric and CrossRef and collaborates with infrastructure providers such as ORCID, DataCite, and PubMed Central.

Peer Review and Editorial Policies

Editorial processes draw on peer-review conventions practiced at journals such as Nature Communications, BMJ (journal), PLOS ONE-style megajournals that assess methodological soundness rather than novelty, and specialized titles resembling PLOS Biology and PLOS Medicine in scope. Peer reviewers and editors have affiliations with universities including Johns Hopkins University, Imperial College London, University of Tokyo, and research institutes like the Max Planck Society and Wellcome Sanger Institute. Policies address conflicts of interest, data availability, and reproducibility in ways paralleling guidelines from bodies such as the Committee on Publication Ethics and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. The publisher has experimented with review models akin to those trialed at eLife and PeerJ.

Business Model and Funding

PLOS operates primarily under an article processing charge model used by publishers such as Frontiers and BioMed Central, balanced with institutional support and funding partnerships with organizations like the Wellcome Trust, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and philanthropic funders akin to the Gates Foundation. It has explored institutional agreements similar to transformative arrangements negotiated with university consortia including the Research Libraries UK group, the California Digital Library, and libraries at Harvard University and Yale University. Corporate governance and nonprofit management involve boards and stakeholders comparable to those at organizations such as the Public Library of Science peers and collaborations with standards bodies like CrossRef and the Committee on Publication Ethics.

Impact, Reception, and Criticism

PLOS’s approach has been praised by advocates for increased access alongside endorsements from researchers affiliated with institutions like MIT, Princeton University, University of California, Berkeley, and funders including the Wellcome Trust. It has also faced critique concerning article processing charges, editorial selectivity, and market dynamics similar to criticisms leveled at Elsevier and other large publishers; commentators from outlets such as The Economist, Nature, and Science (journal) have analyzed its influence. Debates involve stakeholders including national funders like the National Institutes of Health and European Commission, scholarly societies such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and advocacy groups like SPARC. Impact metrics and citation patterns are compared with indices from Web of Science, Scopus, and altmetric aggregators, generating discussion in venues such as the International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication and among research assessment initiatives like the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment.

Category:Academic publishing