PLOS (pronounced like floss) is an open access publisher with a title list of 14 journals including two new titles—PLOS Complex Systems and PLOS Mental Health. A highly respected publisher of peer reviewed journals in the areas of science and medicine (including cross-connections with the social sciences and humanities), PLOS has committed to high standards in research and publication ethics.

…If you are publishing in the sciences, chances are, you already know all this…

What you may not know is that Macalester College Library is a PLOS library partner. This means Macalester corresponding authors pay no fees to publish in any of PLOS’s open access journals. The Macalester agreement with PLOS will extend until the end of 2026.

Our decision to support PLOS stems both from this benefit that it provides to our researchers, as well as PLOS’s ongoing efforts to transition their journal publishing model away from article processing charges (APCs). Read more about PLOS’s transition efforts: Open Access Doesn't Need APCs.

In addition, PLOS supports open science and non-article contributions to scholarly research. In the longer term, PLOS plans to more fully support researchers in their contributions of less visible output: code, methods, data, etc. Learn more about PLOS’s new initiative: Redefining Publishing. 

PLOS’s data availability policy promotes open science and collaboration among researchers by making all data underlying PLOS article findings publicly available (except in cases of legal or ethical considerations). See PLOS author resources such as: How to Store and Manage Your Data for more information about research data management and open repository examples.

One open data repository for researchers at Macalester to consider is Dryad—an open, cross-disciplinary repository that works directly with PLOS to streamline the deposit of open datasets. As part of the repository service, Dryad mints unique DOIs for the dataset and links to the persistent identifier of the research article helping to make more of your research output visible and citable. As a member institution, any Macalester authors are eligible to deposit their open research data for free.

 

Opportunities for you

  • Consider PLOS journals for your research and article publishing. Although there is a heavy science focus, many titles are cross-disciplinary, spanning science, social science and humanities, such as PLOS ONE, PLOS Digital Health, PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, PLOS Water, and check out two new titles: PLOS Mental Health and PLOS Complex Systems.
  • Utilize this opportunity to help boost the impact of your co-authors. Publishing open access in a reputable journal can be especially beneficial for student co-authors or others at under-resourced institutions.
  • Upload your open research data to the Dryad open data repository–no matter your discipline, especially for datasets where a specialist data repository does not exist. Data deposit workflows are further streamlined when publishing with PLOS and with other Dryad partner publishers, such as the American Chemical Society, Oxford University Press, and others.

Macalester Authors

In 2024, four Macalester authors published as corresponding authors under this agreement in PLOS journals:

 

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Louann Terveer is the Digital Initiatives & Scholarly Communication Librarian at Macalester College. She assists faculty, students, and staff in evaluating issues in research access, practices in the publishing ecosystem, copyright, and open educational resources–championing ethical access to research and equity in the scholarly publishing ecosystem. When she isn't nerding out about the library's role in scholarly publishing and open education, you will find her hiking a trail, tasting new beers, or curling up with her cat.