PLOS Publication Costs Update
Open Access scientific publishing makes scholarship available globally and relieves scholarly institutions from the overwhelming burden of commercial subscription fees. Because of this proven success, institutions, funders, foundations and government agencies dedicate significant resources to encourage authors to publish in Open Access journals.
For the past six years, PLOS has absorbed increasing publishing costs without raising author fees. At the same time, PLOS invests resources to improve the quality of PLOS ONE output, thoroughly checking for ethics, competing interests and robust science. As a result, readers can be confident that research published in PLOS ONE is scientifically rigorous and reflects thorough peer review. In addition, PLOS invests millions of dollars in research and development to increase the efficiency, transparency and speed of scholarly communication for all its journals. The center of this investment is the platform ApertaTM, a new submission system currently under development that aspires to substantially improve the publishing experience for authors, reviewers, editors and readers.
To support these endeavors, the Article Processing Charge (APC) for PLOS ONE authors will increase to $1,495 as of October 1, 2015 (effective 10:00 AM PDT). This is the first increase in the PLOS ONE APC since 2009.
PLOS ONE promotes a broad global reach designed to amplify the journal and individual article awareness. Currently, PLOS ONE journal articles garner more than 1.9 million article downloads per month.
PLOS remains committed to ensuring that lack of funds not be a barrier to Open Access publication by providing support to authors with financial need. Periodically, PLOS adjusts the criteria for its financial assistance programs to better reflect demand and the global economy and as of October 1, 2015 (effective 10:00 AM PDT) will utilize the HINARI standard for the Global Participation Initiative. The Publication Fee Assistance program remains unchanged.
Image Credit: Pedro Ribeiro Simões – CC-BY