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 Open Access (OA) publisher, innovator and advocacy organization dedicated to accelerating progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication. The PLOS suite of journals contain rigorously peer-reviewed OA research articles from all areas of science and medicine, together with expert commentary and analysis. In addition to journals, the organization advances innovations in scientific publishing through Collections, Communities and The PLOS Blog Network. Founded to catalyze a revolution in scientific publishing by demonstrating the value and feasibility of OA publication, PLOS is committed to innovative and forward-looking solutions to scientific communication. PLOS journals fully comply with OA mandates from funders, institutions and policymakers; upon publication all articles are immediately deposited in PubMed Central. Since 2003 PLOS has published more than 165,000 articles. 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 believes that scientific ideas and discoveries are a public good, and supports OA to make scientific articles immediately and freely available to anyone, anywhere, for download, print, distribution and reuse without charge or other barriers, as long as the author is properly attributed. OA allows researchers to read and build on the findings of others without restriction, taxpayers to see the results of their investment and provides teachers and their students access to the latest research findings throughout the world. PLOS looks for ways to use emerging technology and new ideas to open up scientific communication - to make it faster, more efficient, more connected and more useful.”

“The first multi-disciplinary, broad-acceptance journal publishing all scientifically rigorous work, PLOS ONE ensures the highest standards of quality and openness for the content it publishes and boosts speed to publication by eliminating subjective assessments of significance or scope to focus on technical, ethical and scientific rigor. The journal publishes original research in all scientific disciplines, including interdisciplinary research, negative results and replication studies - all vital parts of the scientific record. PLOS Biology publishes articles of exceptional significance, originality and relevance in all areas of biological science, from molecules to ecosystems to data-driven meta-research, including work at the interface of other disciplines such as chemistry, medicine and mathematics. PLOS Medicine publishes articles on biomedical, environmental, social and political determinants of human health worldwide. The journal accepts a variety of study designs including clinical trials, observational studies, diagnostic and prognostic tools, epidemiology, predictive and explanatory modeling, qualitative studies and clinically oriented translational research. PLOS Computational Biology publishes works of significance that further the understanding of living systems at all scales - from molecules and cells to patient populations and ecosystems - through the application of computational methods. PLOS Genetics publishes original contributions in genetics and genomics that reflect the full breadth, interdisciplinary nature and impact of these fields on science and medicine, such as human studies as well as research on model organisms - from mice and flies to plants and bacteria - with an emphasis on studies of broad interest to the genetics community that provide significant insight into biological processes. PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, the first journal solely devoted to chronic and poverty-promoting infectious diseases affecting the world's poorest populations, publishes rigorously peer-reviewed research on all scientific, medical, political and public health aspects of NTDs. Commentary on wide ranging topics - from policy discussion to clinical education and topical debates - keep readers current on the implications of research discoveries. PLOS Pathogens is the first Open Access journal for breakthroughs in understanding pathogens and their interactions with host organisms. The journal publishes original research and commentary that yield novel insights into pathogenesis that are of broad interest and importance to researchers studying pathogens and pathogen-host interactions. In the areas of natural disasters, disease outbreaks, rare inheritable diseases and phylogenic studies, PLOS Currents provides an expedited path to publication for rapid exchange of ideas and results. Submission formats are flexible and may include single figure reports, datasets, research in progress and negative results. Technical and publishing process improvements are central to the organization's ability to make science more trustworthy and enrich its assessment, to accelerate and expand discovery of content, and to provide recognition and credit to the scientific community for their contributions in bringing quality research to the public domain. The web-based journal platform, Ambra, was modernized, redesigned and implemented with a service-oriented architecture to enable greater flexibility and responsiveness. Our recent data center migration provides faster, more secure and more reliable applications and services to the public. PLOS also migrated the plos.org site, the main entry point for those visiting PLOS web properties, Collections and Journal home pages to an internal Content Management System tool that allows staff to maintain and support all content pages directly. This facilitates a constant stream of new content and increased exposure for our authors. PLOS.org, the organization's front-facing portal, was redesigned with”

“The PLOS Science Wednesday on redditscience Ask Me Anything series, open to anyone with an internet connection, provides select PLOS authors an opportunity to engage with the broader public. Nearly 51 sessions were held in the past year involving authors from all PLOS journals, advancing knowledge in a dynamic and constructive way through this real-time online exchange between authors, researchers and the public. The adoption of machine-readable persistent identifiers, such as ORCID iDs and DOIs for data sets, is a key part of the infrastructure facilitating Open Science and a way to enable researchers to receive credit for a wide range of research outputs in addition to publications. PLOS liaised with other publishers and ORCID to publicly commit to implementation of this digital tool for improved discovery and recognition in 2016; requiring corresponding authors to have ORCID iDs when submitting manuscripts. PLOS currently publishes ORCID iDs, when available, on articles and blog posts. Specific and comprehensive attribution moves the needle for institutions and funders' abilities to evaluate researchers based on the roles they play in published works, rather than on the journals in which their articles appear or their placement within the byline. PLOS participated along with other publishers and stakeholders (including funders, researchers and university evaluators and administrators) in the community development of the open-standard taxonomy of contributions, intended to replace over time the many disparate lists currently in use. Under the auspices of CASRAI (Consortia Advancing Standards in Research Administration Information) and with the participation of NISO (National Information Standards Organization), the CRedIT taxonomy provides finely-grained information that will help make the ordering of authors less important and will facilitate a shift in focus for tenure and promotion committees - away from how many times an individual is a first-or last-named author and toward their specific contributions to the scholarly record. In a joint effort PLOS continues to raise awareness to the misuse of the Impact Factor that has become institutionalized in the research assessment methods of many universities and national evaluation panels, leading to a perverse incentive system and a need to change the culture of researcher evaluation. A collaborative article from Universit de Montreal, Imperial College London, PLOS, eLife, EMBO Journal, The Royal Society, Nature and Science was posted on bioRxiv that, using a diverse selection of our own journals, provides data illustrating why no article can be judged on the basis of the Impact Factor of the journal in which it is published. The preprint was downloaded 10,000 times in the first month and garnered extensive and constructive peer-review comments demonstrating the power of open review when posting to a preprint server. PLOS supports the growth of Early Career Researchers (ECRs) as they build skills in science communication, become champions of OA and develop into ambassadors of change for a future where all research is freely available. The PLOS Early Career Travel Award Program provides a forum for expression and recognition of innovative ideas from the next generation of leaders. Awards were made to 10 applicants who wrote thought-provoking essays on the optimal peer review process and how they might build this in a way that makes science more transparent and research more rapidly available. The program is open to researchers currently enrolled in a graduate program to within five years of receiving their graduate degree, who have published with PLOS and whose presentation has been accepted or will be presented at an upcoming conference. PLOS Communities continue to move the discussion off the page to online, open venues for a dialogue that distributes knowledge to help researchers place findings into context and stay current on recent discoveries. Growth of PLOS Communities in”