PLOS explained

Public Library of Science
Founded:
(public operations)
Country:United States
Headquarters:Levi's Plaza, San Francisco, California
Keypeople:Alison Mudditt (CEO)
Publications:Academic journals
Topics:Science

PLOS (for Public Library of Science; PLoS until 2012 ) is a nonprofit publisher of open-access journals in science, technology, and medicine and other scientific literature, under an open-content license. It was founded in 2000 and launched its first journal, PLOS Biology, in October 2003.

As of 2024, PLOS publishes 14 academic journals,[1] including 7 journals indexed within the Science Citation Index Expanded, and consequently 7 journals ranked with an impact factor.

PLOS journals are included in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). PLOS is also a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), a participating publisher and supporter of the Initiative for Open Citations, and a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

History

The Public Library of Science began in 2000 with an online petition initiative by Nobel Prize winner Harold Varmus, formerly director of the National Institutes of Health and at that time director of Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center; Patrick O. Brown, a biochemist at Stanford University; and Michael Eisen, a computational biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.[2] [3] The petition called for all scientists to pledge that, from September 2001, they would discontinue submission of articles to journals that did not make the full text of their articles available to all, free and unfettered, either immediately or after a delay of no more than six months. Although tens of thousands signed the petition, most did not act upon its terms; and in August 2001, Brown and Eisen announced that they would start their own nonprofit publishing operation.[4] In December 2002, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation awarded PLOS a $9 million grant, which it followed in May 2006 with a $1 million grant to help PLOS achieve financial sustainability and launch new free-access biomedical journals.[5]

The PLOS organizers turned their attention to starting their own journal along the lines of the UK-based BioMed Central, which has been publishing open-access scientific articles in the biological sciences in journals such as Genome Biology since 2000. The PLOS journals are what is described as "open-access content"; all content is published under the Creative Commons "attribution" license. The project states (quoting the Budapest Open Access Initiative) that: "The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited."

As a publishing company, the Public Library of Science officially launched its operation on 13 October 2003, with the publication of a print and online scientific journal entitled PLOS Biology, and has since launched 11 more journals.[6] One, PLOS Clinical Trials, has since been merged into PLOS ONE. Following the merger, the company started the PLOS Hub for Clinical Trials to collect journal articles published in any PLOS journal that related to clinical trials; the hub was discontinued in July 2013.

PLOS became a signatory of the SDG Publishers Compact in 2023,[7] [8] [9] and has taken steps to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These include the introduction of five new open-access journals in 2021 to publish research relevant to the SDGs: PLOS Climate, PLOS Water, PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, PLOS Digital Health, and PLOS Global Public Health.[10]

In 2011, the Public Library of Science became an official financial supporting organization of Healthcare Information For All by 2015,[11] a global initiative that advocates unrestricted access to medical knowledge, sponsoring the first HIFA2015 Webinar in 2012.[12]

In 2012, the organization quit using the stylization "PLoS" to identify itself and began using only "PLOS".[13]

In 2016, PLOS confirmed that its chief executive officer, Elizabeth Marincola, would be leaving for personal and professional reasons at the end of that year.[14] In May 2017, PLOS announced that their new CEO would be Alison Mudditt with effect from June.[15]

In 2021, PLOS announced a policy that required changes in reporting for researchers working in other countries as an attempt to address neo-colonial parachute research practices.[16]

Financial model

To fund the journals, PLOS charges an article processing charge (APC) to be paid by the author or the author's employer or funder. In the United States, institutions such as the National Institutes of Health and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have pledged that recipients of their grants will be allocated funds to cover such author charges. The Global Participation Initiative (GPI) was instituted in 2012, by which authors in "group-one countries" are not charged a fee and those in "group-two countries" are given a fee reduction. (In all cases, decisions to publish are based solely on editorial criteria.)

PLOS was launched with grants totaling US$13 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation.[17] PLOS confirmed in July 2011 that it no longer relies on subsidies from foundations and is covering all of its operational costs.[18] [19] Since then, the PLOS balance sheet has improved from $20,511,000 net assets in 2012–2013 to $36,591,000 in 2014–2015.[20] [21]

Publications

TitleInceptionISSN
PLOS Biology 2003-10-01
PLOS Medicine 2004-10-01
PLOS Computational Biology 2005-05-01
PLOS Genetics 2005-06-01
PLOS Pathogens 2005-09-01
PLOS Clinical Trials
(later merged into PLOS ONE) 		2006-04-01
PLOS ONE 2006-12-01
PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases 2007-10-01
PLOS Hub for Clinical Trials 2007-09-01 —
PLOS Currents 2009-08-01
PLOS Climate2021
PLOS Digital Health2021
PLOS Global Public Health2021
PLOS Sustainability and Transformation2021
PLOS Water2021

Other partners

In April 2017, PLOS was one of the founding partners in the Initiative for Open Citations.[22]

Headquarters

PLOS has its main headquarters in Suite 225 in the Koshland East Building in Levi's Plaza in San Francisco.[23] Previously, the company had been located at 185 Berry Street.[24] In June 2010, PLOS announced that it was moving to a new location in order to accommodate its rapid growth. The move to the Koshland East Building went into effect on 21 June 2010.[25]

See also

References

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Choose Your Journal . 2022-11-23 . PLOS . en-US.
  2. Web site: History . 24 August 2014 . PLOS . https://web.archive.org/web/20140811081426/http://www.plos.org/about/plos/history/ . 11 August 2014 . dead .
  3. Web site: Professor Michael Eisen: A Pioneer of Open Access Science . The Tower . 2014 . 2015-10-26 . https://web.archive.org/web/20151101015934/http://gttower.org/research.php?volume=6&issue=2&article=eisen . 1 November 2015 . dead .
  4. Brower . V. . Public library of science shifts gears: As scientific publishing boycott deadline approached, advocates of free scientific publishing announce that they will create their own online, free-access archive . 10.1093/embo-reports/kve239 . EMBO Reports . 2 . 11 . 972–973 . 2001 . 11713184. 1084138 .
  5. Web site: Public Library of Science to launch new free-access biomedical journals with $9 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation . 17 December 2002 . Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation . 24 August 2014.
  6. Web site: Submit. 2021-11-29. PLOS. en-US.
  7. Web site: Etah . Oben Joseph . Building a more sustainable future through Open Access research . The Official PLOS Blog . 21 April 2023.
  8. Web site: SDG Publishers Compact Members . United Nations Sustainable Development . 18 July 2023.
  9. Web site: SDG Publishers Compact . United Nations Sustainable Development . 20 July 2023.
  10. Web site: Jacob . Eduard . To boldly grow: five new journals shaped by Open Science . The Official PLOS Blog . 27 April 2021.
  11. Web site: How organisations support HIFA2015 . 22 July 2013 . 20 August 2016 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160820201319/http://www.hifa2015.org/how-organisations-support-hifa2015/ . dead .
  12. Web site: HIFA2015 Webinars . 22 July 2013 . 7 April 2012 . http://webarchive.loc.gov/all/20120407182200/http://www.hifa2015.org/hifa2015-webinars/ . dead .
  13. Web site: New PLOS look . David . Knutson . 23 July 2012 . PLOS BLOG . Public Library of Science . 6 August 2012 . https://web.archive.org/web/20120801091652/http://blogs.plos.org/plos/2012/07/new-plos-look/ . 1 August 2012 . live .
  14. News: PLOS on Twitter . Our CEO Elizabeth Marincola is leaving as of 12/31/16 to go to Kenya for personal and professional reasons. . Twitter . 2016-10-31.
  15. Web site: PLOS Appoints Alison Mudditt Chief Executive Officer STM Publishing News . www.stm-publishing.com . en-US . 2017-05-19.
  16. Web site: 2021-09-27. Announcing a new PLOS policy on inclusion in global research. 2021-10-11. The Official PLOS Blog. en-US.
  17. Declan Butler . Open-access journal hits rocky times . . 441 . 914 . June 2006 . 10.1038/441914a . 16791161 . 7096 . 2006Natur.441..914B . Declan Butler . free .
  18. Web site: 2010 PLOS Progress Update | The Official PLOS Blog . Blogs.plos.org . 2011-07-20 . 2012-02-27.
  19. Web site: How far has open access progressed? . Shigeki . Sugita . SPARC Japan . 2014 . 2015-10-26.
  20. Web site: 2012-2013 Progress Update . PLOS . 2013-09-19 . https://web.archive.org/web/20141007113622/http://www.plos.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Progress-Update_FINAL_hyperlinked-091813.pdf . 2014-01-01. 7 October 2014 .
  21. Web site: 2014-2015 Progress Update . PLOS . 2015-09-15 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160304202614/https://www.plos.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Progress-Update_FINAL_LO_RES_Update-9.15.15.pdf . 2015-10-26. 4 March 2016 .
  22. Web site: Press. 6 April 2017. Initiative for Open Citations. 6 April 2017.
  23. Web site: Contact . PLoS . 2012-03-04.
  24. Web site: Contact . https://web.archive.org/web/20080310204009/http://www.plos.org/contact.html . 2008-03-10 . Internet Archive Wayback Machine . PLoS . 2008-03-10 . 2012-03-04.
  25. Web site: PLoS San Francisco office is moving | The Official PLOS Blog . PLOS . 2010-06-16 . Liz . Allen . 2012-03-04.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "PLOS".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2025, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.