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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.

Research by PLOS

Investigating questions surrounding Open Science and scholarly communications with a view to building better solutions

Our mission is to help lead a transformation in research communication. Success relies in part on developing a deeper understanding of our scholarly publishing system, and the factors that shape it, so we can better understand community needs, motivations, and behaviors.

Like the researchers who publish in our journals, PLOS prioritizes openness by posting, publishing and depositing the results of our scholarly communications investigations. Below are the outcomes from recent studies.

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Open Science Practices

Measuring Open Science

An analysis of the effects of sharing research data, code, and preprints on citations
Giovanni Colavizza, Lauren Cadwallader, Marcel LaFlamme, Grégory Dozot, Stéphane Lecorney, et al

PREPRINT
April 24 2024
DATASET
April 22 2024
CODE
April 22 2024

A survey of funders’ and institutions’ needs for understanding researchers open research practices
Iain Hrynaskiewicz and Lauren Cadwallader

PREPRINT
September 30 2021
DATASET
September 27 2021

Open Science Indicators 

Open Science Indicators are a large public dataset that uses Natural Language Processing to identify and measure Open Science practices, both at PLOS, and in the literature more broadly. The dataset begins in January 2018, and is updated quarterly.

Open Code

A survey of researchers’ code sharing and code reuse practices, and assessment of interactive notebook prototypes
Lauren Cadwallader, Iain Hrynaszkiewicz

ARTICLE
August 22 2022
PREPRINT
February 22 2022
DATASET
March 2 2022

Advancing code sharing in the computational biology community
Lauren Cadwallader, Feilim Mac Gabhann, Jason Papin, Virginia E. Pitzer

EDITORIAL
June 2 2022
DATASET
February 3 2022
CODE
May 27 2022

Code Sharing Survey 2020 – PLOS Computational Biology
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, James Harney, Lauren Cadwallader

DATASET
March 20 2021
PREPRINT
April 28 2021

Open Data

Incentivising best practice in research data sharing: Experiments to increase use of and engagement with data repositories
Lauren Cadwallader, Beruria Novich, Iain Hrynaszkiewicz

PREPRINT
November 7 2023
  

Data from Dryad Integration and Accessible Data surveys
Beruria Novich, Lauren Cadwallader, James Harney

DATASET
May 9 2023
  

A survey of researchers’ needs and priorities for data sharing
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, James Harney, Lauren Cadwallader

ARTICLE
October 13 2021
PREPRINT
February 22 2021
DATASET
February 8 2021

Open Methods

Promoting Reusable and Open Methods and Protocols (PRO-MaP): Draft Recommendations to Improve Methodological Clarity in Life Sciences Publications
Sofia B. Leite, Matthew Brooke, Annamaria Carusi, Andy Collings, Pierre Deceuninck, et al

PREPRINT
June 13 2023

A survey of researchers’ methods sharing practices and priorities
Marcel LaFlamme, James Harney, Iain Hrynaszkiewicz

ARTICLE
January 3 2024
PREPRINT
October 14 2022
DATASET
October 14 2022

The MDAR (Materials Design Analysis Reporting) Framework for transparent reporting in the life sciences
Malcolm Macleod, Andrew M. Collings, Chris Graf, Veronique Kiermer, David Mellor, et al

ARTICLE
April 27 2021

Open Research Culture

A survey of how biology researchers assess credibility when serving on grant and hiring committees
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, Beruria Novich, James Harney, Veronique Kiermer

PREPRINT
March 6 2024
DATASET
February 8 2024

Researchers’ Goals When Assessing Credibility and Impact in Committees and in Their Own Work
James Harney, Louise Mayville, Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, Veronique Kiermer

PREPRINT
July 29 2021

Evaluating equity in scholarly publishing
Simone Taylor, Susan Spilka, Kristen Monahan, Isabel Mulhern, Jeri Wachter

ARTICLE
May 26 2020
Watch this space for new writings and meta-research into scholarly communications and Open Science.
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