When you choose to publish with PLOS, your research makes an impact. Make your work accessible to all, without restrictions, and accelerate scientific discovery with options like preprints and published peer review that make your work more Open.

Research by PLOS

Investigating questions surrounding Open Science and scholarly communications with a view to building better solutions

Our mission is to help lead a transformation in research communication. Success relies in part on developing a deeper understanding of our scholarly publishing system, and the factors that shape it, so we can better understand community needs, motivations, and behaviors.

Like the researchers who publish in our journals, PLOS prioritizes openness by posting, publishing and depositing the results of our scholarly communications investigations. Below are the outcomes from recent studies.

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Open Science Practices

Measuring Open Science

A survey of funders’ and institutions’ needs for understanding researchers open research practices
Iain Hrynaskiewicz and Lauren Cadwallader

PREPRINT
September 30 2021
DATASET
September 27 2021

Open Science Indicators 

Open Science Indicators use Natural Language Processing to identify and measure Open Science practices, both at PLOS, and in the literature more broadly.

Open Science Indicators, Dataset #1: January 2019-June 2022
Iain Hrynaskiewicz and Lauren Cadwallader

BLOG
December 12 2022
DATA
December 12 2022

Open Code

A survey of researchers’ code sharing and code reuse practices, and assessment of interactive notebook prototypes
Lauren Cadwallader, Iain Hrynaszkiewicz

ARTICLE
August 22 2022
PREPRINT
February 22 2021

Advancing code sharing in the computational biology community
Lauren Cadwallader, Feilim Mac Gabhann, Jason Papin, Virginia E. Pitzer

EDITORIAL
June 2 2022
DATASET
February 3 2022
CODE
May 27 2022

Code Sharing Survey 2020 – PLOS Computational Biology
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, James Harney, Lauren Cadwallader

DATASET
March 20 2021
PREPRINT
April 28 2021

Open Data

A survey of researchers’ needs and priorities for data sharing
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, James Harney, Lauren Cadwallader

ARTICLE
October 13 2021
PREPRINT
February 22 2021
DATASET
February 8 2021

Open Methods

A survey of researchers’ methods sharing practices and priorities
Marcel LaFlamme, James Harney, Iain Hrynaszkiewicz

PREPRINT
October 14 2022
DATA
October 14 2022

The MDAR (Materials Design Analysis Reporting) Framework for transparent reporting in the life sciences
Malcolm Macleod, Andrew M. Collings, Chris Graf, Veronique Kiermer, David Mellor, et al

ARTICLE
April 27 2021

Open Research Practices

Researchers’ Goals When Assessing Credibility and Impact in Committees and in Their Own Work
James Harney, Louise Mayville, Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, Veronique Kiermer

PREPRINT
July 29 2021

Evaluating equity in scholarly publishing
Simone Taylor, Susan Spilka, Kristen Monahan, Isabel Mulhern, Jeri Wachter

ARTICLE
May 26 2020

Transparency in Authors’ Contributions and Responsibilities to Promote Integrity in Scientific Publication
Marcia McNutt, Monica Bradford, Jeffrey Drazen, Brooks Hanson, Bob Howard, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Véronique Kiermer, et al

PREPRINT
May 20 2017
ARTICLE
March 13 2018
Watch this space for new writings and meta-research into scholarly communications and Open Science.
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