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PLOS

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Public Library of Science
PLOS logo since March 2020
Founded2000;24 years ago(2000)
2003;21 years ago(2003)(public operations)
Founder
Country of originUnited States
Headquarters locationLevi's Plaza,San Francisco,California
Key peopleAlison Mudditt (CEO)
Publication typesAcademic journals
Nonfiction topicsScience
Official websiteplos.org

PLOS(forPublic Library of Science;PLoSuntil 2012 [1]) is a nonprofit publisher ofopen-access journalsin science, technology, and medicine and otherscientific literature,under anopen-contentlicense. It was founded in 2000 and launched its first journal,PLOS Biology,in October 2003.

As of 2022,PLOS publishes 12 academic journals,[2]including 7 journals indexed within theScience Citation Index Expanded,and consequently 7 journals ranked with animpact factor.

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

History[edit]

The Open Access logo
The first video published alongside a PLOS article: a model of how the humantransferrin receptorassists transferrin in releasing iron[3]
PLOS created this fictional thank you note from the future to contemporary researchers for sharing their research openly

The Public Library of Science began in 2000 with an online petition initiative byNobel PrizewinnerHarold Varmus,formerly director of theNational Institutes of Healthand at that time director ofMemorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center;Patrick O. Brown,abiochemistatStanford University;andMichael Eisen,acomputational biologistat theUniversity of California, Berkeley,and theLawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.[4][5]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.[6]In December 2002, theGordon and Betty Moore Foundationawarded 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.[7]

The PLOS organizers turned their attention to starting their own journal along the lines of the UK-basedBioMed Central,which has been publishing open-access scientific articles in the biological sciences in journals such asGenome Biologysince 2000. The PLOS journals are what is described as "open-access content"; all content is published under theCreative Commons"attribution" license.The project states (quoting theBudapest 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 entitledPLOS Biology,and has since launched 11 more journals.[8] One,PLOS Clinical Trials,has since been merged intoPLOS 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 theSDG Publishers Compactin 2023,[9][10][11]and has taken steps to support the achievement of theSustainable 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,andPLOS Global Public Health.[12]

In 2011, the Public Library of Science became an official financial supporting organization ofHealthcare Information For All by 2015,[13]a global initiative that advocates unrestricted access to medical knowledge, sponsoring the first HIFA2015 Webinar in 2012.[14]

In 2012, the organization quit using the stylization "PLoS" to identify itself and began using only "PLOS".[1]

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.[15]In May 2017, PLOS announced that their new CEO would be Alison Mudditt with effect from June.[16]

In 2021, PLOS announced a policy that required changes in reporting for researchers working in other countries as an attempt to addressneo-colonialparachute researchpractices.[17]

Financial model[edit]

To fund the journals, PLOS charges anarticle 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 theHoward Hughes Medical Institutehave 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 theGordon and Betty Moore Foundationand theSandler Family Supporting Foundation.[18]PLOS confirmed in July 2011 that it no longer relies on subsidies from foundations and is covering all of its operational costs.[19][20]Since then, the PLOS balance sheet has improved from $20,511,000 net assets in 2012–2013 to $36,591,000 in 2014–2015.[21][22]

Publications[edit]

Title Inception ISSN
PLOS Biology 2003-10-01 ISSN1544-9173
PLOS Medicine 2004-10-01 ISSN1549-1676
PLOS Computational Biology 2005-05-01 ISSN1553-7374
PLOS Genetics 2005-06-01 ISSN1553-7404
PLOS Pathogens 2005-09-01 ISSN1549-1676
PLOS Clinical Trials
(later merged intoPLOS ONE)		 2006-04-01 ISSN1555-5887
PLOS ONE 2006-12-01 ISSN1932-6203
PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases 2007-10-01 ISSN1935-2735
PLOS Hub for Clinical Trials 2007-09-01 —
PLOS Currents 2009-08-01 ISSN2157-3999
PLOS Climate 2021 ISSN2767-3200
PLOS Digital Health 2021 ISSN2767-3170
PLOS Global Public Health 2021 ISSN2767-3375
PLOS Sustainability and Transformation 2021 ISSN2767-3197
PLOS Water 2021 ISSN2767-3219

Other partners[edit]

In April 2017, PLOS was one of the founding partners in theInitiative for Open Citations.[23]

Headquarters[edit]

PLOS has its main headquarters in Suite 225 in the Koshland East Building inLevi's PlazainSan Francisco.[24]Previously, the company had been located at 185 Berry Street.[25]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.[26]

See also[edit]

Footnotes[edit]

  1. ^abKnutson, David (23 July 2012)."New PLOS look".PLOS BLOG.Public Library of Science.Archivedfrom the original on 1 August 2012.Retrieved6 August2012.
  2. ^"Choose Your Journal".PLOS.Retrieved23 November2022.
  3. ^Giannetti, A. M.; Snow, P. M.; Zak, O.; Björkman, P. J. (2003)."Mechanism for Multiple Ligand Recognition by the Human Transferrin Receptor".PLOS Biology.1(3): e1.doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0000051.PMC300677.PMID14691533.
  4. ^"History".PLOS. Archived fromthe originalon 11 August 2014.Retrieved24 August2014.
  5. ^"Professor Michael Eisen: A Pioneer of Open Access Science".The Tower. 2014. Archived fromthe originalon 1 November 2015.Retrieved26 October2015.
  6. ^Brower, V. (2001)."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".EMBO Reports.2(11): 972–973.doi:10.1093/embo-reports/kve239.PMC1084138.PMID11713184.
  7. ^"Public Library of Science to launch new free-access biomedical journals with $9 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation".Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.17 December 2002.Retrieved24 August2014.
  8. ^"Submit".PLOS.Retrieved29 November2021.
  9. ^Etah, Oben Joseph (21 April 2023)."Building a more sustainable future through Open Access research".The Official PLOS Blog.
  10. ^"SDG Publishers Compact Members".United Nations Sustainable Development.Retrieved18 July2023.
  11. ^"SDG Publishers Compact".United Nations Sustainable Development.Retrieved20 July2023.
  12. ^Jacob, Eduard (27 April 2021)."To boldly grow: five new journals shaped by Open Science".The Official PLOS Blog.
  13. ^"How organisations support HIFA2015".Archived fromthe originalon 20 August 2016.Retrieved22 July2013.
  14. ^"HIFA2015 Webinars".Archived fromthe originalon 7 April 2012.Retrieved22 July2013.
  15. ^"PLOS on Twitter".Twitter.Retrieved31 October2016.Our CEO Elizabeth Marincola is leaving as of 12/31/16 to go to Kenya for personal and professional reasons.
  16. ^"PLOS Appoints Alison Mudditt Chief Executive Officer | STM Publishing News".www.stm-publishing.com.Retrieved19 May2017.
  17. ^"Announcing a new PLOS policy on inclusion in global research".The Official PLOS Blog.27 September 2021.Retrieved11 October2021.
  18. ^Declan Butler(June 2006)."Open-access journal hits rocky times".Nature.441(7096): 914.Bibcode:2006Natur.441..914B.doi:10.1038/441914a.PMID16791161.
  19. ^"2010 PLOS Progress Update | The Official PLOS Blog".Blogs.plos.org. 20 July 2011.Retrieved27 February2012.
  20. ^Sugita, Shigeki (2014)."How far has open access progressed?".SPARC Japan.Retrieved26 October2015.
  21. ^"2012-2013 Progress Update"(PDF).PLOS. 19 September 2013. Archived fromthe original(PDF)on 7 October 2014.Retrieved1 January2014.
  22. ^"2014-2015 Progress Update"(PDF).PLOS. 15 September 2015. Archived fromthe original(PDF)on 4 March 2016.Retrieved26 October2015.
  23. ^"Press".Initiative for Open Citations. 6 April 2017.Retrieved6 April2017.
  24. ^"Contact".PLoS.Retrieved4 March2012.
  25. ^"Contact".Internet Archive Wayback Machine.PLoS. 10 March 2008. Archived fromthe originalon 10 March 2008.Retrieved4 March2012.
  26. ^Allen, Liz (16 June 2010)."PLoS San Francisco office is moving | The Official PLOS Blog".PLOS.Retrieved4 March2012.

References[edit]

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related toPLOS.
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