ABOUT PLoS

As I have been impressed by the quality of papers published in PLoS Biology, I want to tell you how delighted I am to have one of my own accepted in this journal. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of our study, PLoS Biology was our clear first choice."- Eric O. Long, Ph.D.
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Frequently Asked Questions

Contents:

Questions about open access publishing

What is open access?
Open access means everything published in PLoS journals is immediately available online for free. Read it, host it, print it, copy it, distribute it—all use is fair use, so long as the original authors and source are credited. Open access also means that a complete version of the published work is deposited in an archival public repository (such as PubMed Central), which enhances the utility of all deposited papers by allowing sophisticated searching, manipulation, and mining of the literature, using new and emerging tools. Read more about open access here.

Why is open access important?
Published scientific discoveries and ideas are the foundation for future progress in science and medicine. The more widely and freely accessible they are, the greater their value to scientists, doctors, and the public. Unfettered access to research literature will allow scientists, physicians, educators, students, and the general public to find and read the latest scientific and medical discoveries.

I have free online access to all the journals I need at my institution, so why do we need open access journals?
Although the journals might seem free, in reality your institution has paid a substantial site license fee to provide online access to journals at any computer (even your home computer) that accesses them through your institutional server. There are also strict conditions associated with this access, which limit uses such as archiving the journal content locally, creating teaching materials, incorporating published information into databases, posting articles on institutional web sites, and so on. Site licenses are expensive and cumbersome and can involve complex negotiations, because publishers use many different ways to figure out how much to charge, and of course, many institutions simply cannot afford these licenses. Open access solves all of these problems.

Why do we need open access publications when many journals release their content after 6–12 months?
The vast majority of journals never release their content. Furthermore, timeliness of publication is very important—to readers and to authors—and even a 6- to 12-month delay is detrimental to research, especially in the biomedical sciences. (Would you be willing to wait 6–12 months to read articles in your field?) In any case, there is no real need to restrict access to the scientific and medical literature, now that we have a better alternative. Open access, supported by publication charges, is a more efficient, effective, and equitable means to disseminate scientific and medical literature. As soon as it is published, a research paper can and should be available to all.

What is the Creative Commons Attribution License?
The Creative Commons Attribution License allows anyone to download, reuse, reprint, distribute, or copy articles in PLoS journals, so long as the original author and source are credited. PLoS has chosen to apply this license to the works we publish. This broad license was developed to facilitate open access to, and free use of, original works of all types, and has been adopted by a growing group of authors and artists. Applying this standard license to your work will provide strong legal protection to you and those wishing to use your work, and thus ensure your right to make your work freely and openly available. Please see our licensing agreement.

Will I have to assign copyright to PLoS?
No. Authors are allowed to maintain copyright over their articles when the publish them in PLoS journals. Authors are required to license the articles according to the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which allows anyone to download, reuse, reprint, redistribute, or copy them, so long as the original authors and source are credited. Please see our licensing agreement.

What can I do with a PLoS journal article?
Translate it: Make articles accessible to anyone in any language
Use it: Add articles to a course pack, anthology, or Web site
Print it: Give articles to colleagues or patients
All we ask is that you credit the original author and source. Please read our section on creative uses of PLoS journal content.

Who else promotes open access?
PLoS is one of several initiatives that promote open access to scientific and medical literature. Although they still represent only a tiny fraction of the published research literature, many open access journals have already been launched. A related project is the Open Archives Initiative, which encourages researchers and their institutions to establish free electronic repositories of research literature throughout the world. BioMed Central is a commercial publisher that is publishing original research papers using an open access model. There are also groups, such as the Open Society Institute and the Scholarly Publishers and Academic Resource Coalition, that are providing support and advocacy for open access publishing.

Questions about the Public Library of Science

Who runs PLoS?
PLoS is a tax-exempt, 501(c)3, nonprofit corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California (Federal Tax ID 68-0492065). PLoS is governed by a Board of Directors and Editorial Boards (see www.plosjournals.org) that help to set and implement the policies of PLoS and the PLoS journals.

Why is PLoS launching journals?
Access to the vast majority of scientific and medical literature is currently restricted to those individuals and institutions that can afford to pay for subscriptions. Even though the vast majority of the research is publicly financed, access to research literature—the product of that research—is not freely and publicly available. Even institutions find it increasingly difficult to provide access to all the journals that their communities need. The Internet makes it possible to provide access to the literature to anyone in the world who has an Internet connection. PLoS is launching open access journals based on a new generalizable business model, as a decisive step toward the goal of universal open access.

How will PLoS affect journals published by scientific societies?
Some of the most important scientific and medical literature is published by scholarly societies and associations. In many cases, the societies publish the journals according to the traditional subscription-based model, and with the publishing revenue, they can provide support and services for their members, their communities, and the general public. However, it is our belief that this type of publishing, relative to open access publishing, hinders the progress of science and medicine and reduces the benefits of research to the public. By switching to open access publishing, a scientific society has the opportunity to do an even greater good. There would be risks associated with such a change, both to income and possibly to membership, but societies that grasp this opportunity will be demonstrating a fundamental commitment to the public good - a powerful message for their membership. Even though PLoS might launch journals in areas that could overlap with existing society journals, our goal is not to compete with the societies. PLoS would be happy to hear from and to work with any societies that are contemplating launching open access journals or converting their existing journals to an open access model.

Is PLoS trying to monopolize scientific publishing?
PLoS is launching journals to demonstrate the enormous benefits of open access publishing. Our goal is to make the scientific and medical literature a freely accessible resource, but the literature is huge, and we cannot (nor do we want to) do it all by ourselves. Using the success of our own journals as a template, we hope to encourage other publishers to adopt the open access model. This has always been our goal.

I want my journal to provide open access. How can PLoS help?
PLoS welcomes and actively seeks opportunities to work cooperatively with any group (scientific/scholarly societies, physicians, patient advocacy, educational organizations) and any publisher that shares our commitment to open access. If you are interested in working with us or just need some help, please get in touch with us. There are also two very helpful documents that have been published by the Open Society Institute: the Guide to Business Planning for Converting a Subscription-Based Journal to Open Access and the Guide to Business Planning for Launching a New Open Access Journal. Both articles are by Raym Crow and Howard Goldstein of the SPARC Consulting Group.

What is the relationship between PLoS and PubMed Central?
PubMed Central is an archive created by the National Center for Biotechnology Information of the National Library of Medicine; it is not itself a publisher. It provides a single free repository for the published literature, and several journals—such as the Molecular Biology of the Cell and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA—deposit content at PubMed Central and allow free access a few months after articles have been published. PLoS journals will be deposited in PubMed Central immediately upon publication.

How will PLoS serve the needs of developing nations?
PLoS will provide immediate, free, and unrestricted access to all the research literature that we publish. To this end, we will provide that research in formats that are suitable for readers with Internet access of limited bandwidth. We will also waive or defray author charges for any author who cannot afford to pay publication charges. The Open Society Institute (OSI) also provides funding to support open access to institutions in developing and transition countries to support open access publishing. In addition, we will cover issues in our journals that are relevant to and help to promote the work of researchers, educators, and physicians in the developing world.

How can I support PLoS?
To ensure the success of our launch journals, we need scientists to send us manuscripts of the highest possible quality. This will help us to achieve our initial goal of establishing open access journals for the publication of the very best research. In addition to submitting your own best work, we need advocates within the community: tell your colleagues about PLoS; if you hear from colleagues about a great piece of research, suggest that they submit it to PLoS for publication; sign up for alerts; if you are a member of a society, consider whether your society journals would do a better job if they were open access. Above all else, PLoS is a community initiative, and if there's something that we are doing well or not as well as we could or if there's a new project that we should be thinking about, please let us know what you think.

Can I make a financial contribution to the work of PLoS?
There are a number of ways you can financially support PLoS open access advocacy work, including memberships and sponsorships.

Is PLoS hiring?
If you are interested in working with PLoS in any capacity, please let us know. For current openings, please see our jobs listing.

Questions about the PLoS journals

What type of journals has PLoS launched and what are its future plans?
The first monthly issue of PLoS Biology was published in October 2003 and the first monthly issue of PLoS Medicine was published in October 2004. These journals are broad in their scope and publish papers that provide significant advances that will drive their respective fields forward. In 2005, PLoS launched several community journals that focus on specific fields within biology and medicine—PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics, and PLoS Pathogens. A new community based online forum for the publication of all good science entitled PLoS ONE launched in December 2006.

It sounds as if PLoS is launching elitist journals, just like Science, Nature, Cell, and the New England Journal of Medicine. Why?
As things stand, open access journals are generally viewed as fairly small fish in the publishing pond, and we want to create a few bigger, more noticeable fish. Now that PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine have gained international recognition, PLoS has begun the process of launching—and working with others to launch—diverse open access journals. In this way, we hope that open access journals will become the venue of choice for research publications.

Why only biology and medicine? What about other disciplines?
The scientific and medical literature is vast; the number of peer-reviewed articles published in these fields exceeds 1000 per day. We are starting our mission to make this literature a free resource by launching two important and high-profile journals in biology and medicine. But this is only the start. We will be expanding our publishing operation by launching new journals in more specialized areas of biology and medicine, as well as in other disciplines. We hope that at the same time other organizations will be launching open access journals or converting their present journals to the open access model, and we will be happy to work with any organizations who are interested in doing this.

Will articles be published prior to peer review?
Quality control through peer review is judged one of the most valued functions of any journal. The articles in PLoS journals will be published only after they have undergone a rigorous and constructive peer-review process that will be managed by academic editors in collaboration with experienced professional editors.

How do I submit my manuscript to the Public Library of Science?
PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine publish articles that represent a significant advance - an experimental result, a discovery, or an idea that is likely to drive a broad field forward. You can learn more about all of the PLoS journals, including how to submit your manuscript here. If you are unsure whether your article is suitable for a particular PLoS journal, you will also find instructions on the journal submission sites for how to submit a presubmission inquiry.

How are PLoS journals articles archived?
All PLoS journals articles are archived on the journal Web site and the complete contents are deposited immediately upon publication in PubMed Central—the "full text" archive version of PubMed operated by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. The full texts and figures can be searched by various criteria, including keyword, author, subject, volume, and issue number.

PLoS will also be working with other organizations to establish similar archives in other parts of the world. Besides this, our licensing agreement allows any third party—librarian, institution, or individual—to establish an archive of PLoS journal articles, so long as the articles are made available according to open access principles.

Are all PLoS articles published in English?
Our journals will be published in English, but we would like in the future to be able to make our publications available in multiple languages. Furthermore, we should point out that our license agreement, the Creative Commons Attribution License, enables anyone to make and distribute translations, as long as they give credit to the original authors.

How can I get printed versions of the PLoS journals?
We appreciate that many people enjoy browsing and archiving research literature in print. We used to provide printed versions of our journals, but will cease doing this in 2006, in order to focus our efforts and investment online. Nevertheless, it is still possible to read PLoS journal articles in print.

The easiest and cheapest way to do this is simply to print out the pdf of individual articles or the entire issue of each journal, which are available from the tables of contents. PLoS journals are open access, so there are no restrictions on the number of copies that you can make or on how you choose to distribute them.

For a higher quality printed copy we would like to recommend Odyssey Press, an excellent short run printer. For further information, please contact Kevin Pirkey at Odyssey Press in the USA - kevin@odysseypress.com, telephone (001) 717 225 9477. Please be aware that the price per copy will be higher than we used to charge for a print subscription because of the reduced quantities. We will soon be providing a print-on-demand online service to supply whole issues and article reprints. Watch our sites for further details.

Questions about publication fees

Why should I have to pay to publish my paper?
It costs money to produce a peer-reviewed, edited, and formatted article that is ready for online publication, and to host it on a server that is accessible around the clock. Prior to that, a public or private funding agency has already paid a great deal more money for the research to be undertaken in the interest of the public. This real cost of "producing" a paper can be calculated by dividing your laboratory's annual budget by the number of papers published. We ask that—as a small part of the cost of doing the research—the author, institution, or funding agency pays a fee, to help cover the actual cost of the essential final step, the publication. (As it stands, authors now often pay for publication in the form of page or color charges.) Many funding agencies now support this view.

Will PLoS now have annual substantial price rises just like traditional publishers?
Our aim is to develop a sustainable OA publishing operation. Like any good business we keep all aspects of our organization under constant review, including pricing, costs, improvements in technology, alternative revenue streams such as advertising and sponsorship, philanthropic support and membership. As a non-profit organization, we do not answer to shareholders and owners who seek ever increasing margins and we will ensure that any future price increases place as little burden as possible on authors.

We raised our prices for the first time in 2006, and now have an annual price review. In line with our commitment to minimize the burden on authors, in 2007 our price increases are: no change for PLoS ONE; 5% for PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics, and PLoS Pathogens; and 10% for PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine. The variation in price increases reflects the different costs associated with these publications. These prices will come into effect for new articles submitted after July 15, 2007. For current pricing information see Publication Fees for PLoS Journals.

What does PLoS deliver for the publication fee?
Above all, PLoS journals deliver OA. For you as an author, that means your work will have maximum impact. Anyone with an interest in your work will be able to find it, read it, download it, redistribute it, translate it, and so on. There is growing evidence, for example a recent paper in PLoS Biology, that OA increases the usage and citation of published work. But it doesn't end there. In addition:

  • PLoS journals are frequently covered in the world's most prestigious media
  • Authors have unlimited space to tell their story - there is no restriction on the numbers of pages, figures, tables etc in PLoS journals.
  • Authors retain their copyright and the right to be cited as the originators of their work.
  • PLoS journals provide added value content plus summaries that increase understanding of your work.
  • PLoS deposits published papers immediately into PubMed Central.

More than US$2000 is a lot to pay to publish an article, isn't it?
Not when you consider the cost of the research that led to the article. Publication fees of $2000 or $2500 are a small fraction of the costs of doing research, and it makes sense for funding agencies to include these fees in research grants. Many funding agencies now support this view. They recognize that publishing is an integral part of the research process - and if the work is published OA it will deliver the maximum possible impact, which in turn maximizes the outcome of the funder's investment in research.

And charging for publication is not a new idea. Many traditional journals already charge authors to publish (for color reproduction, excess pages and reprints). These charges can also amount to several thousand dollars, but do not provide unrestricted access to your work like PLoS journals do.

Ultimately, the fees that PLoS charge reflect the costs associated with publishing. We are not in this to make a profit - our bottom line is to make the literature a public resource. The administration of peer review, copy editing, production of high-quality tagged electronic files, web hosting, and so on are expensive processes. They are many of the same processes that are used in traditional subscription journals. If the money that currently supports subscription journals can be re-routed to cover publication fees then we will be able to support open access publishing in a fully sustainable way.

What if I can't afford the publication fee?
PLoS is committed to ensuring that our fee is never a barrier to publication and so we offer a waiver to any authors who do not have access to funds to cover our publication fees. Editors and reviewers have no access to author payment information, to ensure that the ability to pay never influences a publishing decision.

Are publication fees the only source of revenue for PLoS?
In 2003, PLoS embarked on a very ambitious publishing program, and has now established a collection of innovative and high quality open access journals. A new publishing venture like this could never have been launched without substantial financial backing, and we are enormously grateful to our funders for providing the support that we have needed.

As our publishing operation grows PLoS relies less on philanthropic support and more on our revenue from publication fees, advertising, sponsorship and membership programs. The challenge for any organization like PLoS is to ensure that our income from this variety of revenue streams is sufficient to cover our costs, and that we are steadily strengthening our financial independence. We have the mechanisms in place to ensure this balance, and are keeping all aspects of our business under regular review.

Can journals like PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine be supported by publication fees alone?
Possibly not. These journals are run by professional editors, reject a large proportion of the submitted papers, and publish a great deal of added-value content. They are therefore very expensive to run, but they are also representative of only the top tier of scientific journals, which includes Nature, Science, and The New England Journal of Medicine - a tiny fraction of the full complement of scholarly journals. Publication fees provide an important revenue stream for PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine, but this is also supplemented with income from philanthropy, advertisers, sponsors, membership and other parts of the publishing operation.

It's reasonable to ask why we started our publishing with two journals that present the biggest financial challenge in terms of how to support them. The answer is that we felt it was critical to the success of open access that we provide journals of the highest standard. They might not, by themselves, prove the publication fee model for open access publishing, but they provide us with the strongest possible foundation upon which to build our other publications.

Journals such as PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics and PLoS Pathogens, on the other hand, are much more typical of the scholarly literature as a whole. These journals are run by outstanding academic editorial boards who generously donate their time to support the journals. It is likely that these journals can be supported by publication fees alone. We expect these journals to be close to breaking even within the next 2-3 years, which is rapid for any new journal. Our other newer projects such as PLoS ONE are also supported mainly by publication fees. PLoS ONE is priced at $1250.

Aren't you just putting the financial burden of OA on authors?
Our goal is not to have publication charges place any additional financial burden on researchers. Publication is a fundamental part of the scientific and medical research process, and the costs of publication should therefore be treated as a small but essential part of the cost of research. Many of the funding agencies that support research now recognise this view. We understand, however, that not all authors have access to publication fees, which is why we offer a fee waiver in such cases.

Questions about the PLoS Hubs

What is a PLoS Hub?
A PLoS Hub is a window onto content in a specific field, and it will collect together open-access articles from many journals. A PLoS Hub allows a group of people who are interested in the same subject to share their opinions and knowledge and, ultimately, to build a dynamic, interactive community.

Open access is ideally suited to community building because everything published is available for anyone to download, print, and share, without restriction. The interactive tools for rating, annotating, and discussing articles included in the PLoS Hub allow users to enhance the value of research findings, to provide novel insights, and to accelerate scientific progress.

What kind of subjects will be covered?
PLoS Hubs can be long-term, focusing on topics such as breast cancer or conservation, or transient, focusing on a specific project such as a major genome project or a new research challenge, such as the SARS epidemic. Regardless of the lifetime of the PLoS Hub, the articles that appear there will be open-access and also available from the Web site of the journal in which they were originally published.

Why does the first PLoS Hub cover clinical trials?
Clinical trials research is a field in which the benefits of transparency are well documented, which is why PLoS is committed to publishing the results of all clinical trials regardless of outcome, and making this essential information freely and publicly available.

We can publish clinical trials research more effectively by merging PLoS Clinical Trials with PLoS ONE, and launching the PLoS Hub for Clinical Trials. For authors of clinical trials articles published in PLoS ONE, this brings these added benefits:

  • Faster turnaround times (acceptance to publication in as little as three weeks)
  • Lower publication fees
  • Interactive tools and functionality—ratings, annotation, and discussion threads

What content can I see now in the PLoS Hub for Clinical Trials?
The launch version of the PLoS Hub for Clinical Trials collects together the articles that were published in PLoS Clinical Trials, plus clinical trials published in PLoS ONE.

What content will be included in future in the PLoS Hub for Clinical Trials?
The PLoS Hub for Clinical Trials will contain clinical trials articles from PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases as soon as this journal is launched (Fall 2007). Shortly after that we will start to add articles from all of the PLoS journals, but it doesn't stop there. One of the great benefits of open access is that content can be reused without restriction, so ultimately, relevant open-access articles from other journals will also be included. In time, the PLoS Hub for Clinical Trials will evolve into a comprehensive resource of information relevant to anyone interested in clinical trials.

Can I submit a paper to the PLoS Hub for Clinical Trials?
No—a PLoS Hub is not a journal. You should continue to submit your work to the PLoS journal that best suits your needs. If you submit your clinical trials paper to PLoS ONE it will automatically appear in the PLoS Hub for Clinical Trials. If you submit your work to another PLoS journal a link to the paper will be provided on the PLoS Hub homepage, and the article will be fully incorporated into the PLoS Hub in the coming months.

Is the PLoS Hub for Clinical Trials a work in progress?
Absolutely. We will be adding more PLoS content, as well as open-access content from other journals, and we will be launching more PLoS Hubs on different topics. We will also be adding new functionality to the site, and are launching the PLoS Hubs in "beta" so that we can work with the community to help shape this and future PLoS Hubs.

Questions about the TOPAZ Publishing Platform

What is TOPAZ?

TOPAZ is an Open Source content modeling and storage framework built on the Fedora Service Framework, an Open Source storage repository, and Mulgara, an Open Source semantic database. One goal of TOPAZ is to provide a publishing platform to facilitate the shift of the scientific and medical communities from subscription-based journals to an Open Access online commons. TOPAZ debuted to the public in December 2006 with the launch of PLoS ONE.

Will all the PLoS journals be published on the TOPAZ platform?

PLoS publishes seven individual online journals. Each has a different editorial structure, scope, and selectivity. Together, they publish work covering all areas of scientific and medical research.

PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases was launched in November 2007 and joined PLoS ONE on the TOPAZ platform so that the community could benefit from rapid publication times and the tools for interaction with its high-quality content.

Now we are pleased to bring these advantages to PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics, and PLoS Pathogens. Later this year, PLoS Medicine and PLoS Biology will also migrate to the TOPAZ platform.

What can the community expect?

The key change for users is the introduction of Web-based tools that will enrich all of the articles published since the launch of the journals. With the ability to rate and to comment and have discussion threads on articles, it is now possible for the community to add thoughts and ideas to the published content and to interact with other users.

What can authors expect?

With the move to TOPAZ, when articles are accepted for publication in PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics, and PLoS Pathogens, they enter a streamlined production process. Clear instructions are provided to authors to ensure that their manuscript files conform to the requirements of the production process and flow smoothly through it. If necessary, we guide authors toward additional outside services for language editing. We also offer specific guidelines and support to authors who work in LaTeX.

The articles are then thoroughly checked, tagged, and lightly edited for accuracy of key information and consistency of style. The body text of the article, however, will remain largely unaltered. The benefit to authors is that the average interval between final acceptance and publication will now be reduced.

What if my question isn't on your list?
Please contact us.