Public Library of Science

What Public Library of Science does

Public Library of Science (PLOS) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation founded in 2003 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, with subsidiary offices in Germany and Singapore and an additional office in the United Kingdom. The organization operates a portfolio of 16 peer-reviewed open-access scientific journals spanning life sciences (PLOS Biology, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Pathogens, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS ONE, PLOS Ecosystems), health research (PLOS Medicine, PLOS Global Public Health, PLOS Mental Health, PLOS Digital Health, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, PLOS Aging and Health), sustainability (PLOS Climate, PLOS Water, PLOS Sustainability and Transformation), and cross-disciplinary work (PLOS Complex Systems). All content is published immediately under Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, making it freely accessible to anyone with internet access at no charge to readers.

The core technology stack consists of journal websites hosted at journals.plos.org, the public PLOS API for programmatic content access (provided without warranty and subject to modification), and the third-party Editorial Manager system for manuscript submission and peer-review processing. PLOS supplements the journals with the PLOS Blogs network for science communication, curated PLOS Collections, and the Open Science Indicators Dashboard for metrics. AI-enabled tools are deployed in supporting roles for manuscript screening, peer-review support, editorial workflows, research integrity checks, and customer support; the organization explicitly states these tools augment rather than replace human editorial judgment.

PLOS's revenue model is centered on Article Processing Charges (APCs) paid by authors at the point of publication, with fees quoted in USD through Editorial Manager and processed via third-party payment agents. Institutional subscriptions and negotiated agreements with libraries, consortia, and funders — including the Gates Foundation — cover APCs on behalf of affiliated authors in a recurring subscription-style structure. The customer base is structurally diversified across hundreds of thousands of corresponding authors globally, supplemented by institutional agreements with academic libraries and research organizations. Distribution is direct via journal websites, syndicated to third-party platforms, and programmatically accessible via the PLOS API.

Name

Public Library of Science

Legal name

Public Library of Science

Website

https://plos.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

2003

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

51–100 employees

Short description

PLOS is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) open-access publisher operating 16 peer-reviewed scientific journals under CC BY licensing. It serves academic researchers, libraries, and funders worldwide, monetizing through Article Processing Charges and institutional agreements.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Open-Access Academic Publishing

NAICS

Periodical Publishers (513120), Newspaper, Periodical, Book, and Directory Publishers (5131)

SIC

Periodicals: Publishing Or Publishing & Printing (2721)

akta.pro primary industry

Academic & Scholarly Journals Publishing (Peer-Reviewed) (MPAJABAC)

akta.pro secondary industry

Open Access Scholarly Journals & Monographs (EDAGAFAJ)

Keywords

• Open access publishing
• Scientific journals
• Peer-reviewed research
• Scholarly communication
• Academic publishing

Headquarters

HQ city

San Francisco

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices5 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Digital Commerce or Content

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Article Publishing Fees (APCs): Authors pay publication fees to publish their research in PLOS open-access journals. Fees are denominated in U.S. currency and quoted through Editorial Manager. Institutions, funders, and consortia may pay on behalf of authors.
2. Institutional Subscriptions and Agreements: PLOS offers institutional sales and agreements with libraries, consortia, and funders. These negotiated agreements govern publication fees for affiliated authors and provide access to PLOS services.
3. Nonprofit Mission-Driven Revenue: As a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation, PLOS operates with a mission-driven approach prioritizing research enterprise needs over shareholder returns. Revenue supports open science publishing operations.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

PLOS operates a portfolio of 16 peer-reviewed open-access scientific journals across life sciences, health, sustainability, and technology disciplines. Authors pay article processing charges (APCs) to publish under CC BY license, with institutional agreements enabling libraries, consortia, and funders to cover publication fees for affiliated researchers. All content is freely accessible worldwide through journal websites, third-party syndication, and a public PLOS API.

Product overview

Public Library of Science (PLOS) is a non-profit open science publisher operating a portfolio of peer-reviewed open access journals across scientific disciplines. The portfolio includes 16 journals covering life sciences (PLOS Biology, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Pathogens, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS ONE, PLOS Ecosystems, PLOS Aging and Health), health research (PLOS Medicine, PLOS Global Public Health, PLOS Mental Health, PLOS Digital Health), sustainability (PLOS Climate, PLOS Water, PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases), and cross-disciplinary work (PLOS Complex Systems). PLOS also operates supporting platforms including PLOS Blogs for science communication, PLOS Collections for curated article bundles, the Open Science Indicators Dashboard for metrics, and provides access via a public PLOS API. All PLOS content is published under Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license for open access.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• PLOS Biology A peer-reviewed open-access journal dedicated to all aspects of biology, from molecular to ecosystem scale.
• PLOS Medicine A leading medical journal publishing human health research of the highest standards.
• PLOS Computational Biology An open-access journal featuring research in computational biology and bioinformatics.
• PLOS Genetics An open-access journal publishing research in genetics and genomics.
• PLOS Pathogens A journal dedicated to pathogens, host biology, and immunity research.
• PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases The leading open-access journal focused on neglected tropical diseases.
• PLOS ONE A broad-scope, rigorous peer-reviewed open-access journal covering all aspects of science and technology.
• PLOS Global Public Health An open-access journal addressing global public health challenges and inequities.
• PLOS Climate A multidisciplinary open-access journal dedicated to climate change research.
• PLOS Digital Health An open-access journal dedicated to digital health research spanning health informatics, wearable devices, and health data science.
• PLOS Complex Systems An open-access journal focusing on complex systems research across scientific disciplines.
• PLOS Mental Health An open-access journal dedicated to mental health research across all disciplines.
• PLOS Sustainability and Transformation An open-access journal addressing global challenges of transitioning to a resource-efficient, food-secure, sustainable future.
• PLOS Water An open-access journal bringing together research on water as a vital resource for societies worldwide.
• PLOS Aging and Health A journal focusing on research addressing human aging and health across the lifespan.
• PLOS Ecosystems An open-access journal publishing research on ecosystems and ecological systems.

Quantifiable outcome

• Anyone with internet access can find, read, mine, cite and share OA articles at no cost to them
• +1 more outcomes

Named customers5 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability2 records

Feature3 records

Partnerships

Five partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• Bill & Melinda Gates FoundationcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerGates Foundation partnership mentioned in announcements section of PLOS website. The foundation has been a significant funder and partner in advancing open science and global health research publishing. PLOS engages with major funders on policy and publication initiatives.
• World VisioncoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerWorld Vision partnered with Emory University to conduct research on women's water collection burden and economic empowerment. World Vision developed the Strong Women Strong World: Beyond Access (SWSW) program, and partnered with Emory to lead research testing hypotheses about women's water access and economic engagement.
• Emory University Rollins School of Public HealthcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerEmory University led mixed-methods research design and implementation in partnership with World Vision across Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. Research focused on women's water collection burden and economic engagement, resulting in publications in PLOS Global Public Health and PLOS Water.
• UNC Water InstitutecoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerPLOS partnership with UNC Water Institute for the UNC Water and Health Conference Collection. Partnership spans PLOS Water and PLOS Sustainability and Transformation journals to publish critical research in the WASH sector (water, hygiene, and sanitation).
• Northwestern UniversitycoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerProfessor Sera Young from Northwestern University serves as co-Editor-in-Chief of PLOS Water journal, providing editorial leadership and academic oversight for the journal.

Scale indicators3 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Others

• arXiv: Open-access preprint repository in physics, mathematics, computer science, and quantitative biology. arXiv is an adjacent, ecosystem-level participant in open scholarly communication that influences author submission behavior toward or away from traditional OA journals like PLOS.

Broad incumbents

• Springer Nature (Open Access portfolio): Largest STM publisher with an extensive open-access journal portfolio (including BMC, Nature Communications, Scientific Reports) plus hybrid and subscription journals converting to OA. A broad incumbent that competes with PLOS across the full open-access spectrum and is the primary counterparty in many institutional transformative agreements.

Direct peers

• PeerJ: Open-access publisher of peer-reviewed journals in the biological and medical sciences. PeerJ uses an APC-based model similar to PLOS, targets academic researchers and institutions, and is often compared with PLOS ONE on broad-scope life-sciences publishing.
• Frontiers: Swiss-based open-access publisher with a large portfolio of peer-reviewed journals across science, health, and sustainability. Frontiers competes head-to-head with PLOS for the same APC-funded author base and has overlapping journal scopes in life sciences, climate, and health.
• eLife: Nonprofit open-access publisher of peer-reviewed research in life and medical sciences. eLife is a direct peer to PLOS in mission, nonprofit governance, and OA publishing model, and is often cited alongside PLOS Biology and PLOS Medicine as a destination for high-profile biomedical research.
• BioMed Central (BMC): Springer Nature's open-access journal portfolio covering STM disciplines. BMC is a direct peer to PLOS: both publish large portfolios of peer-reviewed OA journals funded primarily through APCs and serve the same academic author and institutional customer base.
• MDPI: Open-access publisher with a very large APC-funded journal portfolio spanning the sciences. MDPI is a direct peer in business model and target market, often competing with PLOS on turnaround time, scope breadth, and APC pricing.

Emerging players

• Open Library of Humanities: Nonprofit, library-funded open-access publisher in the humanities. It is a like-for-like nonprofit OA publisher peer that shares PLOS's mission-driven model, though it operates in HSS journals rather than STM, making it an emerging peer in open science publishing broadly.
• F1000 (F1000Research): Open-research publishing platform using post-publication peer review and APCs. F1000 is an emerging peer whose open, transparent peer-review model overlaps with PLOS's open-science mission and competes for researchers seeking novel review workflows.
• bioRxiv and medRxiv: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory preprint servers for biology and clinical sciences. They are not traditional journals but are emerging players in scholarly communication that compete with PLOS journals for author attention, early research dissemination, and version-of-record decisions.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/plos
• Facebookfacebook.com/plos.org
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/28660

Compliance1 record

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles4 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Public Library of Science