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Breaking boundaries.
Empowering researchers.
Opening Science.
PLOS is a nonprofit, Open Access publisher empowering researchers to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication.
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Every country. Every career stage. Every area of science. Hundreds of thousands of researchers choose PLOS to share and discuss their work.
Together, we collaborate to make science, and the process of publishing science, fair, equitable, and accessible for the whole community.
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Leading a Transformation in Science Communication.
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Break Boundaries:
To advance research faster, share more broadly, and increase collaboration
Empower Researchers:
To transform science through inclusivity, choice, credit, and transparency
Redefine Quality:
To assess and communicate the full arc of research more fairly and accurately
Open Science:
To build a foundation of knowledge from which we all advance
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OUR HISTORY:
2001
PLOS launches as a nonprofit with a mission to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication.
2003
PLOS Biology, the Open Access alternative to leading biology journals, draws 500,000 visitors within hours of publishing its first article.
2004
PLOS Medicine provides free access to high-quality, reliable medical research to the public and world’s physicians with a focus on diseases that take the greatest global toll.
2005
PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Genetics and PLOS Pathogens prove Open Access in specialized areas and draw on expertise from the scientific community to improve author experience.
2006
PLOS ONE, the first multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal to focus on rigorous research and ethics rather than perceived impact, redefines the scientific journal.
2007
PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases launches with a focus on diseases with limited visibility and funding that affect an estimated 1.1 billion of the world’s poor
2008
The first International Open Access Week, co-founded by PLOS, SPARC and Students for Free Culture to promote Open Access globally, addresses themes ranging from Open for Collaboration, Generation Open and Redefining Impact.
2009
PLOS Blogs Network launches as a platform for news and community discussion from all fields of science and scholarly communication.
PLOS Article-Level Metrics available for each and every published article, giving authors the opportunity to track their unique research impact across multiple channels in real time.
2011
Curated PLOS Collections on focused themes ease discovery and provide opportunity for breadth of coverage from PLOS journals, blogs and external sources all in one place.
2013
The Accelerating Science Awards Program (ASAP) co-sponsored by PLOS, honors pioneers using Open Access research to benefit society. The program attracts 200 nominations from 30 countries.
2014
The PLOS Data Policy ensures a research article’s underlying data is available to the science community, promoting new discovery, replication and validation.
2016
PLOS partners with bioRxiv so that authors can directly transfer their work to PLOS after sharing their work early as a preprint.
Implementation of standardized CRediT roles and ORCID iDs make it easier for authors to track and receive recognition for their unique contributions.
2017
PLOS Channels with external editors provide opportunity for discovery, exploration and contextual insights.
2018
PLOS makes posting a preprint even easier by giving authors the option to check a box at submission and have us post a preprint to bioRxiv on their behalf.
2019
Published Peer Review History gives authors and reviewers more options to increase the transparency of the publication process by making decision letters and review comments available for published manuscripts.
Reviewers opt-in to receive automatic credit for their reviews and add more nuance to their scholarly profiles through ORCID.