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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.

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Published Peer Review History

All PLOS journals are single-blind with the option to engage in more transparent peer review.

Choice. Credit. Transparency.

There’s no one right way to peer review. We leave the decision in your hands with our modular, opt-in approach to signed & published peer review, letting you decide what works best for you and your manuscript.

When science becomes more Open, we all advance.

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Transparency in the peer review process is extremely valuable to the research community. It is my hope that early career researchers who may be conducting research similar to our own may read the comments that our peer reviewers made in order to better understand what they might expect throughout the peer review process
Chaomei Chen
Professor, College of Computing & Informatics, Drexel University
WHY CHOOSE SIGNED & PUBLISHED PEER REVIEW?

Quality

Publishing reviews reinforces the validity of the work by showcasing the rigorous vetting process that published research undergoes.

Credit

We see peer reviews as essential contributions to the scientific literature in and of themselves. Signed and published peer review expands reviewers’ options for claiming academic credit for their work.

Enrichment

Signed and published reviews help contextualize research, giving readers the benefit of expert opinions that would otherwise remain hidden.

Accountability

Transparency in peer review helps surface potential competing interests and holds everyone involved in the scientific assessment process to the same standard.

HOW IT WORKS AT PLOS
  • Reviewers choose to sign their review and can take credit for their comments.
  • Authors can reveal the expert assessment that has shaped their final work by publishing the editor’s decision letter and reviewer feedback along with their response.

Author and reviewer choices result in four possible degrees of openness. Together, they give an entire community of readers access to more expert perspectives, and insight into the assessment of science.

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