PLOS is a non-profit organization on a mission to drive open science forward with measurable, meaningful change in research publishing, policy, and practice.

Building on a strong legacy of pioneering innovation, PLOS continues to be a catalyst, reimagining models to meet open science principles, removing barriers and promoting inclusion in knowledge creation and sharing, and publishing research outputs that enable everyone to learn from, reuse and build upon scientific knowledge.

We believe in a better future where science is open to all, for all.

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Flat Fee Agreements

Our Flat Fee (FF) agreement streamlines and simplifies managing publishing fees (APCs) by shifting the cost from individual articles to an institutional annual fee. Institutions who participate in this agreement gain access to a suite of services from PLOS and provide unlimited publishing opportunities for their researchers across seven PLOS journals.

How it works

We use your institution’s historic publication activity and the current publication fees to calculate an annual fee that covers the cost of unlimited publishing opportunities (pending peer review) for your authors in the following PLOS titles: PLOS Complex Systems, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Biology, PLOS Digital Health, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, PLOS One, and PLOS Pathogens.

Benefits for your institution

Reduced administrative overhead

Flat Fees make it easier for institutions to support their authors’ open access publications through a single, annual invoice to your institution. Ensuring that all your authors — irrespective of ability to pay — can submit to PLOS journals, these agreements lock in the current APC rate making them valuable investments over the agreement term.

Unlimited publications in specified PLOS journals

Institutional support ensures all authors have equal access to make their work open at PLOS, regardless of individual funding resources. Your annual flat fee payment automatically covers author publication costs across seven of our journals, giving your authors the flexibility to choose which journal is right for them. It also includes any new titles or article types launched during the agreement term.

Deeper insights and transparency

We believe in giving our partners more insight into publication activity and cost, to continue driving solutions that benefit the entire scholarly community. Under the Plan S Journal Comparison Service framework, we’ve committed to sharing our journal costs and fees transparently. We invite you to work with us to define and refine data insight needs around the activity of your authors.

Choose the right institutional agreement for you

We recognise that all institutions are different. We offer different options for institutions that reflect the diverse research needs of our communities.

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Community Action Publishing

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Global Equity

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APCs for institutions

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Frequently asked questions

If you have any questions about our institutional agreements and how they can benefit your institution, we recommend exploring our FAQ section.

Read our FAQs

All PLOS partnership agreements are subject to PLOS’ Master Publishing Terms of Service. Institutions or consortia that wish to partner with us should contact us for further information.

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