PLoS as More Than a Publisher

Although publishing excellent content remains at the heart of what we do, we recognize that there are many other ways to change the information landscape. That’s why we are so active in such a wide range of areas and seek collaborative relationships with others in relevant fields so that we can work together to reinvent the world of scholarly communication.

Open Access Advocate

Today, open access (OA) has unstoppable momentum, thanks to the introduction of institutional policies that mandate OA on a local, national, and international level. Working in collaboration with a coalition of open-access advocacy organizations, PLoS takes an active role in supporting a number of initiatives. You can find out more about these by checking out the Advocacy section of this website.

Membership Programs

The PLoS membership programs enable institutions, libraries, and individuals to show support for OA and build important collaborative relationships. PLoS thanks our institutional members and individual advocates for helping us in our efforts to create a sustainable, comprehensive system of open-access publishing.

For more information about the program, see the Institutional Membership page. You can also find out about other ways to support PLoS and the open access movement.

Technology Developer

PLoS is constantly pushing the boundaries by using open-source technology to improve the way publishing works. We’ve built a single open source publishing platform (called Ambra) for all our journals so that we and others can experiment with new approaches to the presentation and interactivity of content. Because our content is open access, talented developers are free to take part as well, such as those who build apps for PLoS content on the iPhone and iPad. We’ve also added article-level metrics to every PLoS article so that it’s possible to assess the impact of the content in new ways and we’ve introduced some of the most sophisticated search capabilities in scientific and medical publishing. In the summer of 2011, PLoS launched the Search and Article-Level Metrics APIs to encourage the creation of applications that will improve the way PLoS users discover and interact with our (and their) content.