This article was accepted into the corpus but its outbound wikilinks were never NER-processed — typical at the deepest BFS hop or when the run's entity cap was reached. No expansion funnel to show.
| Public Libraries of Science (PLOS) | |
|---|---|
| Name | Public Libraries of Science (PLOS) |
| Formation | 2000 |
| Type | Nonprofit publisher |
| Headquarters | San Francisco |
| Leader title | CEO |
| Leader name | Elizabeth Marincola |
Public Libraries of Science (PLOS) is a nonprofit open-access publisher founded to reform scholarly communication and broaden public access to scientific literature. It operates multiple journals and platforms that aim to make research articles freely available under permissive licenses, influencing debates among National Institutes of Health, Wellcome Trust, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, European Commission, and other major research funders. PLOS has been central to policy shifts involving Plan S, the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, and guidance from organizations such as the Committee on Publication Ethics.
PLOS was initiated by a group of scientists including Harold Varmus, Patrick O. Brown, and Michael Eisen in response to concerns about access exemplified by disputes involving publishers like Elsevier and controversies including the BMC transition debates. Early milestones paralleled campaigns led by Jeffrey Probst, SPARC, and advocacy from commentators in journals such as Science and Nature. The launch of flagship journals followed precedents set by legacy titles like The Lancet and Journal of Biological Chemistry, and coincided with policy shifts from funders including the National Institutes of Health and the Wellcome Trust.
PLOS is structured as a nonprofit organization with a board of directors and executive leadership; past governance has involved figures from institutions such as Stanford University, University of California, Harvard University, Yale University, and Johns Hopkins University. Its advisory and editorial boards have included researchers affiliated with entities like the Max Planck Society, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Governance practices have been compared with university presses such as Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press and oversight models seen at agencies like the National Science Foundation.
PLOS pioneered an article-processing charge (APC) model used by journals including PLOS Biology, PLOS Medicine, PLOS ONE, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, PLOS Pathogens, and PLOS Clinical Trials. The portfolio and editorial processes contrasted with subscription models of publishers like Springer Nature, Wiley-Blackwell, and Elsevier. PLOS ONE introduced a high-throughput peer review approach influenced by experiments at journals such as BMJ Open and initiatives by the Royal Society. Editorial oversight has involved academic editors from institutions including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology, University of Cambridge, and Imperial College London.
PLOS adopted liberal licensing such as Creative Commons Attribution to maximize reuse, aligning with principles in the Budapest Open Access Initiative and the Berlin Declaration. Its policies intersect with funder mandates from Wellcome Trust, Gates Foundation, and national policies from bodies like the European Research Council and the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy. Licensing choices have implications for reuse in repositories such as PubMed Central, arXiv, and institutional repositories at Columbia University, University of Oxford, and University of Tokyo.
PLOS has been credited with accelerating open access adoption alongside actors such as SPARC, DOAJ, and campaigns like #ICanHazPDF critiques. It has been cited in analyses by Altmetric, bibliometric studies from Clarivate Analytics and Scopus, and policy reviews at OECD and UNESCO. Criticisms include APC affordability concerns raised by researchers at University of Cape Town, University of São Paulo, and activists associated with Sci-Hub controversies; comparisons have been drawn to affordability debates around open access megajournals and pricing practices at Elsevier.
PLOS developed and adopted platforms influenced by open-source projects and standards promoted by groups such as the Crossref, ORCID, DataCite, and the Open Archives Initiative. Its publishing workflow integrates submission systems comparable to Editorial Manager and repository integrations with PubMed Central and Figshare. Tools for metrics and discovery have interoperability with services like Altmetric, Dimensions, Google Scholar, and identity systems at ORCID.
PLOS operates through APC revenues, institutional agreements, philanthropy from funders such as the Wellcome Trust and Gates Foundation, and transformative agreements with consortia like SCOAP3 and national libraries including the British Library and German Research Foundation. Partnerships have included collaborations with academic institutions like University of California campuses and consortiums such as Jisc and Projekt DEAL. Debates about sustainability have involved stakeholders including Research Councils UK, European Commission, and representatives from major publishers such as Springer Nature.
Category:Open access publishers