When you choose to publish with PLOS, your research makes an impact. Make your work accessible to all, without restrictions, and accelerate scientific discovery with options like preprints and published peer review that make your work more Open.
Maximize academic credit and keep track of your contributions using Open Science tools and practices.
Open Science offers a broader range of publication options, while open software and taxonomic solutions track specific academic contributions with ease and granularity. Together, more published research outputs and a more detailed and accurate records let you showcase your work and build your reputation as a researcher.
An ORCID iD (Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier) is a persistent, unique digital identifier for researchers, used to track both author and reviewer activity. With ORCID, you can:
At PLOS, all corresponding authors must provide an ORCID ID when submitting. Co-authors, reviewers, and editorial board members also have the option to provide an ORCID. Through an integration with our submission system, authors and reviewers can choose to have their ORCID profiles updated automatically as they complete activities in our system.
Publons is a platform for researchers to track less-visible contributions to science, like peer review and editorial activity. Editors can verify their activity by forwarding thank you emails to the service. Reviewers can choose to have their Publons profile automatically updated directly from our submission system.
The CRediT taxonomy is a system for transparently documenting each author’s individual contribution to a scholarly publication using 14 contributor roles. With CRediT you can:
At PLOS, each author listed on a submitted manuscript must have at least one CRediT contributor role assigned. Published articles list the contributor roles in detail, making them a permanent part of the scientific record.
*PLOS Medicine, PLOS Biology, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Pathogens, PLOS NTD
Impact cannot be measured by citations alone. We partner with Altmetric to capture and document the many ways scientists and the public engage with your research.
In this third and final entry in our three-part series on academic credit, we turn our attention to peer review.
Welcome back to the second in our three-part series on academic credit. In this post, we focus on identifying researchers’ specific contributions to a research project, and explore how those contributions are reflected on a published paper.
In the sciences, credit counts. As a research scientist, your personal record directly determines your future opportunities in a measured, almost algorithmic way.
Research articles are just one aspect of the value you create as a scientist. We believe you deserve credit for all of your research contributions, not just the final published research article. Discover options to surface and share more of your research through PLOS.
Developing methods is among the most demanding and time-consuming aspects of scientific investigation. PLOS offers options for publishing and sharing methods to suit each type of study or stage of research, including Registered Reports, Lab and Study Protocols, Methods Research Articles, and linked code.
Data is the main product of a scientific investigation. PLOS’ forward-looking open data policy requires authors to make the data underlying their published manuscript publicly available, while our partnership with Dryad makes sharing data via public repository easy. We believe that making data a part of the scientific record reflects the true importance and lasting relevance of datasets.
Peer review is essential to trusted science and a major aspect of any career in research. In addition to our partnerships with ORCID and Publons, PLOS offers optional signed and published peer review, giving reviewers more opportunities to claim academic credit for this often-overlooked body of work.
Learn more about the benefits of Open Science. Open Science