Announcing the launch of five new journals, all addressing global health and environmental challenges and rooted in the full values of Open Science…
Open for submissions (Part 1)

It has already been a month since we announced we’re launching five new journals. For those of you patiently waiting, we are excited to announce that the journals are now OPEN for submissions!
The responses we’ve seen so far have been overwhelmingly positive. We’d like to say a HUGE THANK YOU to those of you who have expressed your support on social media, via email, and the many hundreds of you who have applied to join the editorial boards of the journals–we have been delighted to see how our reasons for launching them have resonated with you.
The journals’ websites now contain much more information on each journal’s mission, scope, personnel, submission instructions and hopefully everything you need to consider submitting your work:
- PLOS Climate
- PLOS Sustainability and Transformation
- PLOS Water
- PLOS Digital Health
- PLOS Global Public Health
If what you want to do is explore the journal most relevant to you, and consider it for your future work, please consider this blog post an appropriate “jumping off point” for you to do that! In summary: we have affordable, APC-free business models for all our journals available through institutional partnerships which allow unlimited publishing by all authors at the institution. We also have publishing fees/APCs for those who still need or prefer them, and an established APC-waiver program for those who cannot afford APCs but whose institutions are not yet under an institutional agreement. Please presume there is a way, that is appropriate for you and your context, that you will be able to publish in these new journals!
For those of you who want to know more details about our institutional models, in particular librarians and others managing Open Access budgets, please read Part 2 of this announcement.

I need information relating to clinical trial design for our clinical trial data to be acceptable to Plos-1 for publication. We are currently designing four-arm clinical trials to compare placebo to “drug” to autologous cells to allogeneic cells for regenerative medicine. Studies will be run in sequence rather than parallel: six months on placebo followed by six months on “drug” followed by 12 months with autologous cells (6 treatments) followed by 12 months with matched allogeneic cells (12 treatments) followed by two years follow-up. Clinical assessments will occur at time zero and every six months thereafter until completion of trial.
Henry, Thanks for your interest in our journals. Here is the PLOS MEDICINE policy we currently have in place for clinical trials:
https://journals.staging.plos.org/plosmedicine/s/human-subjects-research#loc-clinical-trials