Public Library of Science

“Form 990 is prepared by an outside tax professional with assistance from the organization. The form is then reviewed by the cfo and members from the audit committee. After review and modifications where necessary, the final version of the tax return is provided to the board of directors. The cfo signs and files all required tax filings.”

“The general counsel and secretary oversees the annual conflict of interest disclosure process. A committee of the board of directors reviews all potential conflicts of interest at least annually. The ceo and all board members are required to disclose (in writing) potential conflicts and any related party affiliations. Loans between the organization and members of management and the board are strictly prohibited. The organization seeks full transparency on all relationships. Any potential conflicts (in fact or appearance) are discussed openly and resolved in accordance with the organization's policies and procedures.”

“The compensation committee of the board of directors reviews the compensation of all high-level personnel annually in accordance with irs rules and regulations. Efforts are made to secure compensation data from industry sources in order to determine competitiveness and appropriateness of salaries and benefits. Every effort is made to ensure that the process is thorough and transparent in accordance with appropriate governance and regulatory compliance. This is performed annually and the process is managed by the hr director. Review encompasses ceo, cfo, executives and key employees.”

“Plos makes its governing documents, conflict of interest policy, and financial statements available to the public. These documents are also posted on our website.”

“Public library of science (plos) is a nonprofit publisher and advocacy organization founded to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication. Plos publishes a suite of influential open access journals from disparate areas of science and medicine that contain rigorously peer-reviewed research articles, together with expert commentary, analysis and educational material. Plos journals fully comply with open access mandates from funders, institutions and policymakers; upon publication all articles are immediately deposited in pubmed central. Quality reporting in research articles, deep dives into key topics with collections, provoking perspectives and editorials and online communities for discussion bring readers to the more than 135,000 articles published since 2003. The organization's core objectives are to: - provide ways to overcome unnecessary barriers to immediate availability, access and use of research - pursue a publishing strategy that optimizes the quality and integrity of the publication process - develop innovative approaches to the assessment, organization and reuse of ideas and data plos supports open access to make scientific articles immediately and freely available to anyone, anywhere for them to download, print, distribute, read and reuse without charge or other restrictions, as long as the author is properly attributed. Open access fuels discovery by freeing research from its barriers. A broad community benefits from the work of plos as an open access innovator: scientists more rapidly build on the work of others in their field, librarians enable wider dissemination of published work, funders maximize their return on investment in the research they fund, entrepreneurs access articles to develop new technologies, research institutions act on their directives and the public benefits from scientific and medical advances.”

“An innovative and influential venue for research and comment on the major challenges to human health worldwide, plos medicine publishes articles across all areas of medical science, clinical practice and health policy that have the potential to directly and substantially inform clinical practice or health policy, or to provide substantial, novel mechanistic insights into disease processes. By publishing outstanding original contributions in all areas of biology, from mice and flies to plants and bacteria, plos genetics reflects the full breadth, interdisciplinary nature and impact of genetics and genomics research on science and medicine. Reflecting the full breadth of research on bacteria, fungi, parasites, prions and viruses, plos pathogens publishes outstanding original articles that significantly advance the understanding of pathogens and how they interact with their host organisms. The first journal solely devoted to neglected tropical diseases, plos neglected tropical diseases publishes leading research and commentary on all scientific, medical, political and public health aspects of these forgotten diseases affecting the world's most neglected people. By making connections through the application of computational methods among disparate areas of biology, plos computational biology provides substantial new insight into living systems at all scales, from the nano to the macro, and across multiple disciplines, from molecular science, neuroscience and physiology to ecology and population biology. Plos one, the first multi-disciplinary, broad-acceptance journal publishing all scientifically rigorous work, has become the world's largest peer-reviewed open access scientific journal. Plos one provides a platform for authors that combines speed to publication, high standards of science, and unrestricted scope of research. On a daily basis, exceptional research published in the plos suite of open access, peer-reviewed journals is brought to the forefront with additional community and staff commentary and social media communications. Plos enters its 12th year poised to deliver innovations that will make science publishing easier, faster and more seamless. As a leading open access publisher, the organization maintains high author satisfaction and global reach. At the core, though, it's the articles that matter: in 2014 plos published more than 33,000. Last year readers worldwide viewed approximately 11.6 million plos articles each month, published by authors from more than 200 countries with the assistance of nearly 7,000 academic editors and 90,000 reviewers. Without the publication of negative, null and inconclusive results the research record is incomplete. These missing pieces in the scientific literature - when discoverable - help prevent duplication of research endeavors and accelerate research progress. The plos missing pieces collection highlights the importance of publishing all sound science, including negative findings which are valuable to the community both in cases where the result is illuminating in the context of previous work and as a measure against unnecessary research efforts. Plos also strives to bring reliability to the public scientific record. In an example of both early posting and open review, topic pages in plos computational biology increase scientifically accurate coverage of computational biology topics in wikipedia by incentivizing authors to contribute with a peer-reviewed, citable version of their page as an article in the journal. Demonstrating a new level of interaction between researchers and the public, pages created and edited on the topic pages wiki undergo a fully open peer-review process and are published as citable journal articles together with the reviews and responses. Wikipedia versions of articles are updated as new discoveries are made. Eight topic pages have been published thus far. The rapidly changing scientific communication landscape offers new opportunities for interaction betwe”

“Plos invested in improving the reader experience: a new format for the journal homepages to better highlight content and incorporate some of the striking images that accompany plos articles was introduced. Improvements focused on the author and community experience included modifications to quality assurance and typesetting processes to implementation of a new, single column pdf design that enables a more efficient composition process while improving readability of plos articles across a variety of devices. Part of a larger effort to improve ambra, our open source publishing platform, many of the initiatives occurred behind the scenes and serve as the pillars of future initiatives and integrations. Others are immediately visible to the community including the alm signpost design for users to more easily see the views, cites, saves and shares an individual article receives as well as improved display and feedback options for subject area terms. Plos also provided $2.8 million in the form of partial or full waivers to authors as part of our publication fee assistance. As a nonprofit publisher, one core objective is to provide ways to overcome unnecessary barriers to immediate availability, access and use of research, which at times may include cost. Though this amount appears as a contra-revenue for financial reporting purposes, this is a major program expense for plos which demonstrates the organization's support to science and global public community. Much of the hardship support goes to authors from low-and middle-income countries and early career scientists in upper middle- and high-income countries who have been unsuccessful in securing adequate funding support.”