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Publishing Terms of Service
All PLOS partnership models are subject to PLOS’ Master Publishing Terms of Service. Institutions or consortia that wish to partner with us should contact us for further information.
Community Action Publishing
About CAP
What is a collective action model?
Collective action is predicated on the assumption that entities that work together as a group – or collective – can achieve outcomes more effectively than working individually. Collective action, an economic, political, and sociological concept was enshrined in the work of Mancur Olson in his book The Logic of Collective Action. Common examples of “collectives” include condominium cooperatives, farm cooperatives, unions, academic library consortia, some forms of insurance and many more.
In the case of PLOS Medicine, PLOS Biology, and PLOS Sustainability & Transformation, the community goal is to cover the costs of the journals (plus a 10% capped margin) by equitably distributing cost, rather than have individual authors pay the high APCs required to cover the cost highly selective publishing. Members of the collective receive the “private benefit” of publishing in both journals with no fees. Authors from non-member institutions are subject to “non-member fees” which increase considerably year-on-year to encourage participation in the collective.
With the PLOS CAP model, any revenue above the targets is redistributed to community members at renewal.
What is the goal of PLOS’ Community Action Publishing model?
The goal of this model is to use an alternative business model – “collective action” – to:
- Demonstrate that highly selective Open Access journal publishing can cover its costs without charging high APCs, or indeed any APCs
- Equitably distribute cost amongst institutions that publish most in those two journals
- Cap revenue and redistribute community fees amongst community members when revenue target is reached
Collective action is predicated on the assumption that entities that work together as a group – or collective – can achieve outcomes more effectively than working individually. Collective action as an economic, political, and sociological concept was enshrined in the work of Mancur Olson in his book The Logic of Collective Action. Common examples of “collectives” include condominium cooperatives, farm cooperatives, unions, academic library consortia, some forms of insurance and many more.
In the case of PLOS Medicine and PLOS Biology, the community goal is to cover the costs of the journals (plus a 10% capped margin) by equitably distributing cost, rather than have individual authors pay the high APCs required to cover the cost of highly selective publishing. Members of the collective receive the “private benefit” of publishing in both journals with no fees. Authors from non-member institutions are subject to “non-member fees” which increase considerably year-on-year to encourage participation in the collective.
With the PLOS CAP model, any revenue above the targets is redistributed to community members at renewal.
What makes the PLOS Community Action Publishing model unique?
- CAP focuses on making selectivity financially sustainable, NOT on revenue maximization. This means that additional revenue over and above the revenue target is redistributed to Community Action members at renewal.
- The model is an entirely new method for funding highly selective journals.
- CAP considers both corresponding and contributing author contributions in calculating publishing activity.
- Institutions – not PLOS – drive the transition timeline by the speed in which they join the communities.
- CAP integrates so-called “Read” institutions (addressing the larger concerns about “Read” institutions potentially exiting the publishing ecosystem when they no longer have to pay to read content) by recognizing the contributions/cost represented by institutions who only ever publish as contributing authors but never corresponding authors.
How is Community Action Publishing different from a subscription?
This model is different from a subscription in that:
- It covers the cost of publishing content not reading content.
- It transparently links fees and tiers. Historically subscription models have never been fully transparent about what constitutes the basis for their fees.
- The margin is capped because the goal is sustainable selective publishing – NOT revenue maximization.
- Revenues return to community members at renewal if/when the group achieves the revenue target. PLOS does not keep additional revenue above the target.
What are the PLOS Community Action Publishing targets for each journal?
PLOS Biology | PLOS Medicine | PLOS Sustainability and Transformation | |
Direct + Indirect Costs | $1,997,015 | $1,422,930 | $947,768 |
10% operating margin | $199,700 | $142,295 | $94,776 |
Community Cost Recovery Target | $2,196,715 | $1,565,225 | $1,042,544 |
These are publicly available on the PLOS website at https://plos.org/resources/community-action-publishing/ and progress towards these targets will be reported annually.
How can PLOS reach the revenue targets and what happens if/when that happens?
While community fees alone could achieve the target, it is more realistic that community fees and non-member fees together will achieve the target since 100% participation in each community is unlikely.
Any additional revenue above the revenue target will be redistributed to community members in the form of reduced fees the following year.
Why does the model include contributing author affiliations?
There are two main reasons: one mission-driven, the other practical:
- Mission considerations: PLOS has always been deeply committed to reforming and reimagining the current practice of research assessment to focus less on individual proxy metrics for impact and more on the actual contributions of authors to research. Focusing on corresponding authors – indeed, building entire business models around their designations – further reinscribes the privileged position of corresponding authors, ignoring both the contributions of other authors and the benefits they receive when publishing.
- Practical considerations: Including contributing authors in the model is a key step to highlighting their roles in the research process and ensuring institutions are covering that cost.
By including contributing authors, the PLOS Community Action Publishing model begins the process of integrating so-called “Read” institutions into “publishing-based” models. Institutions that are affiliated with contributing authors but never corresponding authors “exit” business models focused on corresponding author designation. Their money goes with them.
- Given the well-articulated concerns about the shift-to-OA placing undue burden on research intensive institutions to carry the costs for all academic publishing (while read institutions read for free), finding novel ways of integrating these institutions fairly is an important step in evolving business models.
Is Community Action Publishing available for all PLOS journals?
Community Action Publishing is currently only available for PLOS Biology, PLOS Medicine, and PLOS Sustainability and Transformation. However, each of our other journals offers a flat fee model for institutions who want to eliminate APCs for their authors publishing in any PLOS journal.
Do APCs currently cover costs for PLOS Biology and PLOS Medicine?
No. PLOS intentionally cross-subsidizes the PLOS Medicine and PLOS Biology APCs to keep them lower than the “true APC” (the APC value that would actually cover cost). This is the problem with funding highly selective OA journals with APCs. They typically have to be very high APCs to cover cost. This is why we’re piloting the collective action model.
PLOS Sustainability and Transformation will be the first new title to launch with the CAP model and no APCs.
What makes highly selective journals more expensive?
Highly selective journals have high publishing costs due to high rejection rates and bespoke author services. To make these articles Open Access using individual article processing charges (APCs), the resulting APCs are usually very high ($5K USD or more).
Rather than charge the costly “true APC” that would cover the cost of publishing in those journals (~$6100 USD for PLOS Medicine and ~$5400 for PLOS Biology), we have historically deflated the APC to make it more affordable. With the PLOS Community Action Publishing effort, we will eliminate APCs altogether.
Member fees
What is the pilot period?
The pilot term is January 1, 2021 to December 31, 2023
What are the Community Action Publishing fees?
The table below shows the membership fees for a 3-year agreement to join the PLOS Biology, PLOS Medicine, or PLOS Sustainability and Transformation journal communities.
PLOS Sustainability and Transformation opened for submissions in May, 2021 and will publish its first issues in 2022. As an introductory offer, institutions who join the PLOS Sustainability and Transformation journal community for the 2022 – 2024 period receive a discount on the annual fee, as shown in the table below.
Annual Fee For a Three Year Agreement 2022-2024 Medicine | Annual Fee For a Three Year Agreement 2022-2024 Biology | Annual Fee after introductory pricing Sustainability and Transformation | Introductory Annual Fee For a Three Year Agreement 2022-2024 Sustainability and Transformation | |
Tier 1 | $44,305 | $42,805 | $8,560 | |
Tier 2 | $26,970 | $31,595 | $6,410 | |
Tier 3 | $21,575 | $27,200 | $5,600 | |
Tier 4 | $14,450 | $22,800 | $4,960 | |
Tier 5 | $9,250 | $16,340 | $4,345 | |
Tier 6 | $6,360 | $12,000 | $3,405 | |
Tier 7 | $4,625 | $9,200 | $2,655 | |
Tier 8 | $3,085 | $6,400 | $1,900 | |
Tier 9 | $1,930 | $4,000 | $1,325 | |
Tier 10 | $1,160 | $2,400 | $930 | |
Tier 11 | $770 | $1,600 | $525 | |
Tier 12 | $385 | $800 | $275 |
Fees for a one year commitment are available upon request.
Are the fees for one year or three?
The quote in your proposal reflects your average fees per year for a 3-year commitment with 2% growth year over year.
How are the Community Action Publishing fees calculated?
The fees for participating in the PLOS CAP communities for PLOS Biology, PLOS Medicine, and PLOS Sustainability and Transformation are based on an institution’s projected average annual publishing activity in each of the journals.
How ‘publishing activity’ is calculated for PLOS Biology and PLOS Medicine: The projected average annual publishing activity for each institution is calculated based on the number of articles for which an author affiliated with the institution was a corresponding author or a contributing author at PLOS Biology or PLOS Medicine. In calculating the activity, contributing-author articles have been weighed at half that of those for corresponding authors.
To facilitate fee modeling, each institution’s average publishing activity has been adjusted to reflect a projected increase in future publishing activity (an 84% increase for PLOS Biology and a 65% increase for PLOS Medicine). However, this adjustment does not change the level of an institution’s publishing activity relative to other institutions or affect the relative fee for each institution. The activity reflects the annual average over 5.75 years of publishing.
How ‘publishing activity’ is calculated for PLOS Sustainability and Transformation: The projected average annual publishing activity for each institution is calculated based on the number of articles for which an author affiliated with the institution was a corresponding author or a contributing author in any publication within the PLOS Sustainability and Transformation topic area. The activity reflects the annual average over 5 years. In calculating the activity, contributing-author articles have been weighed at half that of those for corresponding authors. To facilitate fee modeling, each institution’s average publishing activity has been adjusted to reflect the mature journal size for PLOS Sustainability and Transformation.
As an introductory offer, institutions who join the PLOS Sustainability and Transformation journal community for the 2022 – 2024 period receive an approximate 50% discount on the annual fee. This adjustment does not change the level of an institution’s publishing activity relative to other institutions or affect the relative fee for each institution.
Tier | Average Annual Weighted Activity | ||
MED | BIO | S&T* | |
Tier 1 | > 12 | > 7 | > 90 |
Tier 2 | 9 – 11.99 | 6 – 6.99 | 80 – 89.99 |
Tier 3 | 6 – 8.99 | 5 – 5.99 | 70 – 79.99 |
Tier 4 | 4.5 – 5.99 | 4 – 4.99 | 60 – 69.99 |
Tier 5 | 3 – 4.49 | 3 – 3.99 | 50 – 59.99 |
Tier 6 | 2 – 2.99 | 2 – 2.99 | 40 – 49.99 |
Tier 7 | 1.5 – 1.99 | 1.5 – 1.99 | 30 – 39.99 |
Tier 8 | 1 – 1.49 | 1 – 1.49 | 20 – 29.99 |
Tier 9 | 0.6 – 0.99 | 0.6 – 0.99 | 15 – 19.99 |
Tier 10 | 0.4 – 0.59 | 0.4 – 0.59 | 10 – 14.99 |
Tier 11 | 0.2 – 0.39 | 0.2 – 0.39 | 5 – 9.99 |
Tier 12 | 0 – 0.19 | 0 – 0.19 | 0 – 4.99 |
How tiers are set: The tiers have been set so that, to the extent possible, the difference in activity between one tier and the next is relatively uniform. The natural distribution of activity over 12 tiers yields the activity ranges for each journal shown.
* Activity for PLOS Sustainability and Transformation appears higher as it is based on publication volume across the field rather than a single journal.
How are authors/institutions counted?
Neither institutions nor authors are counted. Rather, we total publication activity for a given institution from 2014 – Q3 2019. The model evaluates how often an institution was affiliated with both corresponding and contributing authors, assigns a weighting to both activities. That total “publishing activity” then determines tier assignments.
Are the Community Action Publishing tiering and fees related to APCs?
No, CAP tiering and fees are not related to APCs. There is no relationship between the APCs that authors have paid historically and the fees structure of CAP. Intentionally decoupling cost-per-article from the fees structure is one innovation of this model.
Fees are based on historical publishing activity (in both the corresponding and contributing author positions from 2014-Q3 2019) relative to the total revenue target to be covered by the group and certain uptake assumptions of how many institutions will join each community and when they’ll join.
How is publication activity weighted?
Publishing activity is counted by determining the number of times an institution was associated with a corresponding author AND the number of times an institution was associated with contributing authors. Papers where the institution is affiliated with the corresponding authors are weighted as 1 article and papers where the institution is affiliated with the contributing author are weighted as ½ article. (Multiple contributing authors from the same institutions are counted only once).
- Example: University XYZ has published 10 papers in PLOS Medicine between 2014-Q3-2019. Six of those papers were affiliated with corresponding authors and four were affiliated contributing authors. UXYZ thus had eight “publishing activities” in the time period evaluated since the six papers each count as “one” publishing activity and the four contributing author papers count as two publishing activities (4 papers x ½).
How often are tiers and fees calculated?
The PLOS CAP pilot is three years from Jan 1, 2021-Dec 31, 2023. We plan on re-tiering all institutions publishing in both journals every three years (barring any major changes recommended by communities’ members). Mid-year 2023, PLOS will recalculate publishing activity (over a rolling 6 year period) for any institutions affiliated with corresponding or contributing authors in either journal. The revised tiers and fees will then be applied to the 2024-2026 period. We will be soliciting feedback annually from community members on the model as well as monitoring publishing activity for both journals to ensure the tiers are optimized to member savings and PLOS cost recovery targets.
Why is the term for historical publishing activity 5.75 years?
We wanted to use as broad a time period as we could to mitigate against publishing activity fluctuations year-over-year. We chose to go back as far as 2014 but could not wait until the end of 2019 so we went ahead and used three quarters of 2019 on top of 2014-2018.
What is the margin and why is it capped?
The margin is additional revenue on top of direct and indirect costs needed to reinvest in the journals. Merely covering cost with no “surplus” risks the journals’ financial sustainability. That said, PLOS is capping the margins on both journals because we have determined that 10% is sufficient for reinvestment. Additional revenue is unnecessary as we are not trying to grow the journals for revenue’s sake. Therefore, we will return any revenue above the target to the PLOS Community members at renewal.
Do the institutions stay in the same tier for the three-year pilot period (independent of publication volume changes that might happen during the term?)
Yes. Tiers and fees are recalculated once every three years. Tiers/fees will be remodeled in the summer of 2023 for the second pilot period starting in 2024.
Participating in CAP
Which institutions are eligible to participate in the PLOS Communities?
Any institution may participate in one or all three PLOS Communities. If institutions have a prior publishing history with either journal (either affiliated with corresponding or contributing authors in anything published from 2014 through Q3 of 2019) PLOS has already assigned it a tier and fees based on that publishing activity. Contact institutionalaccounts@plos.org for fees or visit the PLOS CAP website at plos.org/resources/for-institutions.
Institutions with no prior publishing history during the time period evaluated are welcome to join at the lowest tier fees in both PLOS Communities.
Are there three communities or just one for all journals?
There are three independent communities.
Does my institution have to join all 3 communities?
No. An institution may join either community independently.
Is my institution or consortium eligible for discounts?
PLOS is not engaging in the “transactional discounting” often associated with traditional consortial agreements because this is a collective and changes in what one entity pays directly impact everyone else’s costs. The fairness and transparency of the model go away with transactional discounting.
However, we will offer discounts for entities that can minimize our administrative burden. For consortia paying through one invoice (who have no other agreements with PLOS) we are offering a 1% discount.
How are ‘Read’ institutions included in PLOS Community Action Publishing?
Read institutions are included in various ways in this model:
1. By including the affiliations of contributing authors as well as corresponding authors, the model integrates institutions that only ever publish as contributors and never lead authors and consequently fall into the “read” category in many models. See the FAQ above “Why does the model include contributing author affiliations?”
2. Any institution with no historical publishing history in either journal during the period we evaluated (2014- Q3 2019) are considered “read” institutions and can participate at the lowest tier of either community. Participation acts as “insurance” in the event that your authors do choose to publish either as corresponding or contributing authors in future.
Do institutions need to commit to all three years?
No, you can enter and leave the PLOS Community at will. However, three years is the ideal commitment period as we work together to build both publishing communities.
What happens if I drop out of the collective mid-term?
- Your corresponding authors will be exposed to the increased non-member fees after a period of paying no fees
- The time to transition away from APCs takes longer (as the speed and consistency of institutional agreements drives the transition)
- Other members of the PLOS Community may see increased costs
- You may be ineligible for redistribution of funds when revenues exceed the Community target
- You will not receive a refund as your authors will still benefit if their articles are published during the term for which you paid
Can institutions with no prior publishing history in PLOS Biology and/or PLOS Medicine participate in either or both PLOS Communities?
Yes, institutions with no publishing history are welcome to participate at the lowest tier for each community.
Authors from my institution are usually contributing authors and publish infrequently. Why should we participate?
Participation acts as “insurance” in the event that one of your authors wants to publish as a contributing author or corresponding during the pilot period. The annual fee is considerably less than non-member fees in most cases.
Are funders contributing anything to either PLOS Community?
Several funders have indicated interest in participating. We are working with them to determine the best way for them to participate, enabling the PLOS Community to more quickly achieve its revenue target. We will communicate when/how/if funders will participate upon confirmation.
Can these communities “fail?” and what does that look like?
Technically collectives fail when the shared goal can’t be achieved due to individual actors undercutting the collective’s efficacy as a group – the so-called “free rider” problem. PLOS mitigates against this risk by creating an alternative, parallel revenue stream (non-member fees) that allows for slower PLOS Community Action Publishing uptake and/or variable participation. Non-member fees ensure that authors from non-member institutions are still contributing to each journals’ financial sustainability.
Are institutions penalized for not participating?
No. Their authors are simply charged non-member fees. See the table below:
Non-member Fees by Year | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 |
Biology | $4,000 | $5,300 | $5,500 |
Medicine | $4,000 | $5,300 | $6,300 |
Author non-member fees
What is happening to APCs for PLOS Biology and PLOS Medicine during the pilot period?
As of January 1, 2021, neither PLOS Biology nor PLOS Medicine will have APCs. Instead, Community Action Publishing fees and non-member fees will cover the publishing costs.
Authors from institutions who are not members of the communities will be subject to the following non-member fees.
Non-member Fees by Year | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 |
Biology | $4,000 | $5,300 | $5,500 |
Medicine | $4,000 | $5,300 | $6,300 |
Non-member fees for PLOS Sustainability and Transformation will remain fixed at $3,000 throughout this period.
Will contributing authors be paying non-member fees?
Currently, no. Assuming we see the level of uptake required to make the model feasible, we intend to ONLY charge corresponding authors non-member fees.
What happens if one or more contributing or corresponding author's institution is not a member of PLOS CAP?
These are the current submission scenarios for 2021-2023:
1. All corresponding and contributing authors are members – No non-member fees.
2. Corresponding author is a member but some/all contributing authors are not – No non-member fees.
3. Corresponding author is NOT a member but some/all contributing authors are members – Corresponding author is subject to the non-member fee for that year with a 25% discount thanks to the contributing author member(s) status.
4. Neither corresponding author nor contributing authors are members – Full non-member fee
What if my authors cannot pay non-member fees?
Corresponding authors whose institutions are not PLOS Community Action Publishing members who are published in either journal are subject to non-member fees during the transition period (see table above). If they are unable to pay non-member fees, they may apply for waivers as per the standard fee-waiver mechanisms offered by PLOS. See PLOS Publication Fees.
- For the PLOS Biology and PLOS Medicine Communities, institutions geographically located in Research 4 Life countries are automatically members of each community and researchers will never be subject to fees.
- Additionally, their institutions will be contacted post-submission, pre-acceptance to encourage them to join the relevant PLOS Community to help their authors avoid fees. If they join before article acceptance, the corresponding author will not be subject to APCs.
- PLOS historically spends between $1.5- $3M USD annually to support waiver requests from authors who cannot pay fees. Moving to non-APC models allow us to reduce the number of waivers we need to cover while ensuring authors are still able to publish with PLOS.
What happens when a contributing author submits as a corresponding author for the first time?
If an author associated with a secondary publish institution (an institution that has only been affiliated with co-authors but never corresponding authors) publishes as a corresponding author for the first time, they will see no non-member fees. Their participation in the PLOS Community effectively acts like insurance and significantly saves the institution and author on non-member fees. When it comes time for renewal, all institutions’ tiers will be recalculated based on publication trends from 2020-2022 (most likely – we have to confirm how many year’s we’ll evaluate) and any secondary publish institutions that publish as corresponding authors during that period will move into the “primary publish” institutional group.
Authors from my institution are usually contributing authors and publish infrequently. Why should we participate?
Participation acts as “insurance” in the event that one of your authors wants to publish as a contributing author or corresponding during the pilot period. The annual fee is considerably less than non-member fees in most cases.
What happens to my authors' benefits if I drop out of the collective mid-term?
Authors will still receive membership benefits if their articles are published during the term for which the institution has already paid (institutions will not receive a refund for a partial term). After the end of the term, corresponding authors will be subject to the non-member fees of that year.
PLOS Flat Fee Agreements
About Flat Fee Agreements
What are the goals of this model?
The core goals of this model relate to minimizing the administrative burden of acquiring and managing publishing funds and ensuring equitable access to publishing.
- Streamline and simplify the management of payments for publishing (APCs) through a predictable and transparently generated annual flat fee
- Minimize the administrative burden for libraries on managing APC funds, tracking eligibility, and approving funding requests
- Eliminate financial pressure on authors to find funding to pay for their publications and reduce cost for institutions overall by shielding authors from periodic changes to APCs as well as any fees associated with new article types and/or future journals
- Ensure equitable access to native Open Access publishing for authors wishing to publish in PLOS titles
- Offer a competitive, alternative publishing outlet to institutions who have negotiated “transformative agreements” with other publishers (where Open Access publishing is essentially free for authors)
How is the Flat Fee different from a subscription?
The Flat Fee covers authors’ publishing costs while subscriptions cover reading costs. All PLOS journals are fully Open Access meaning there are never any costs to readers.
Institution or consortial fees and tiers are transparently calculated based on historical publishing trends and waiver rates in the five PLOS journals.
How is the Flat Fee model different from PLOS Community Action Publishing (CAP)?
While the mechanism for payment in both models is the same (an annual flat fee), the journals involved and the mechanisms for calculating the fees are different
Journal Eligibility
The FF model is available for seven PLOS journals: PLOS Complex Systems, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Digital Health, PLOS Genetics, PLOS NTDs, PLOS ONE, and PLOS Pathogens
Fees for the FF are based on the APC rates at the time of negotiation as well as the partner’s historical publishing activity, waiver rates, and spend by corresponding authors.
Fee Calculation
Fees for CAP are based on the total publication costs for these journals and factor in both corresponding and contributing author activity. Additionally, the CAP model is predicated on collective action and is community driven; that is, the uptake by community members drives how quickly the collective can reach the target.
Both models are committed to ensuring anyone who wishes to publish in PLOS titles can do so with no fees and reduced administrative burden for their institutions. This will happen over time as the models mature.
Why are there three different models instead of one model for all PLOS journals?
PLOS is currently experimenting with different models for a couple of reasons:
- Diversity in multiple business models is safer and more financially sustainable. Models like Community Action Publishing (CAP) are complicated to develop, difficult to explain, and require a long commitment over many years to achieve success. To shift all journals to one entirely new model with no data would be imprudent.
- We prefer to iterate in small steps, focusing on addressing specific problems. In the case of community action, we’re addressing the high cost of APCs for highly selective journals. In the case of Global Equity, we’re addressing financial barriers to facilitate global participation in Open Access support. In the case of the flat fee model for the other five journals, we’re focusing on high administrative overhead of managing many APCs (which is why PLOS ONE –our biggest journal–is part of that model).
- Experimentation with three models simultaneously allows us to compare results, gather customer and market feedback in real-time, report to the marketplace in real-time, and iterate as changes need to be made — all without putting all our “eggs in one basket.”
Partnership Details
Does my library need to participate in all seven journals?
Yes. Our Flat Fee model is designed to automatically cover publications in PLOS Complex Systems, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Digital Health, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, PLOS ONE, and PLOS Pathogens through a single, annual fee.
Does my library have to verify/approve articles as they’re accepted?
Only if you wish. Flat fee customers will receive a monthly “Submissions” report and a monthly “Publications” report to see what was submitted and published in the last month. Libraries are welcome to review these but verification and approval is not required.
Partner Fees
How is pricing calculated?
The annual fee is calculated by multiplying the journal’s current APC by the projected number of publications for the term year, based on publication activity from the previous two years (for PLOS Complex Systems and PLOS Digital Health this is based on publication activity in the field). This fee includes a 4% discount on the list price for the five journals, and the mean waiver rate for institutions is included.
The fee calculation includes modest publication growth in each year of the agreement. The projected increase in number of publications was determined by looking at a number of factors:
- Removing the APC barrier to publishing with PLOS should have an incentivizing effect of encouraging more publications.
- PLOS will be conducting targeted marketing to authors of affiliated institutions which will raise the profile of the PLOS agreement and encourage further publications.
What is the author surcharge?
This fee is completely optional and libraries can decide what fee, if any fee, they want to apply. We recommend $500 USD or less but some institutions make them higher because they stair step them down over time as a transition mechanism.
PLOS Global Equity Model
About our Global Equity model
What are the goals of this model?
Our new Global Equity model empowers institutions in every region of the world to provide unlimited publication support for their authors through a single, annual fee that is equitable, and affordable.
This model is designed to remove financial barriers for researchers and institutions around the world to participate in Open Access and Open Science. Participation fees are based on each institution’s historical research output in the field and are reflective of their regional economy according to their country’s World Bank lending tier. Costs are fixed and transparent to give libraries more control over their budgets.
Institutions who participate in our Global Equity model eliminate publication fees for their authors in any of our broad scope, issue-driven journals, PLOS Climate, PLOS Global Public Health, PLOS Mental Health and PLOS Water encouraging diverse, equitable representation of all research perspectives in addressing these vital, global challenges.
Partnership Details
Which institutions are eligible to participate in this model?
All institutions are eligible to participate in this model. Please contact us to request a pricing quote.
Which journals are covered by this model?
Our Global Equity model is currently available for PLOS Climate, PLOS Global Public Health, PLOS Mental Health and/or PLOS Water.
Does my library need to participate in all fourjournals?
No. Topics covered in each journal vary and may be more relevant to some institutions than others. Our Global Equity model gives institutions the flexibility to choose which journal(s) they would like to participate in.
Why isn’t this model available for all PLOS journals?
PLOS is currently experimenting with different models focusing on addressing specific problems in Open Access publishing. Our Global Equity model is specifically designed to remove financial barriers for researchers and institutions around the world to participate in Open Access and Open Science, encouraging diverse, equitable representation of all research perspectives in addressing vital, global challenges.
Partner Fees
How is pricing calculated?
How is pricing calculated? What are the pricing tiers?
The fees for participating in this model are based on an institution’s historical publishing activity in topics covered by the relevant journal and the institution’s relative World Bank lending tier. The Global Equity model will therefore allow that a large institution in a lower middle income country (LMIC) will pay less than one of comparable size in a high income country (HIC), but more than a small institution in an LMIC
How “publishing activity” is calculated:
The publishing activity for each institution is calculated based on the number of articles for which an author affiliated with the institution was a corresponding author or a contributing author in any publication within the relevant field over a 5-year period. In calculating the activity, contributing-author articles have been weighed at half that of those for corresponding authors.
Pricing tiers:
The following table shows the annual prices for institutions, per journal. Tier 1 is a high output institution in the subject area, to Tier 6 being a low output institution in the subject area.
Example: a low output institution in a LMIC interested in PLOS Climate would pay $385 per year to cover unlimited publishing by its authors in the journal.
HIC | UMIC | L/LMIC | |
Tier 1 | $6,600 | $5,940 | $2,310 |
Tier 2 | $4,950 | $4,455 | $1,735 |
Tier 3 | $4,125 | $3,715 | $1,445 |
Tier 4 | $3,300 | $2,970 | $1,155 |
Tier 5 | $2,200 | $1,980 | $770 |
Tier 6 | $1,100 | $990 | $385 |
Research4Life | $0 | $0 | $0 |
Equity Contribution: Institutions in any tier or lending class have the option to contribute a voluntary payment of $1,500 that will go towards further reducing the annual costs for that journal to institutions in low-income regions. Each year all funds accrued through equity contributions will go towards increasing the discount to the L/LMIC annual costs.
What are the APCs fees for these journals? What happens if my authors can’t afford these?
Researchers located in Research4Life countries automatically publish at no cost. The APC for all other researchers without an institutional partnership is $2,400 for PLOS Climate, PLOS Global Public Health, or PLOS Water or $2,205 for PLOS Mental Health. Our publication fee assistance program is available to all authors who cannot afford to pay any portion of the publication fee. Authors should apply for this waiver at the time of submission.
For institutions in many low- and middle-income countries, as well as institutions with infrequent publishing activity in the field, the cost to join the Global Equity model may be lower than a single APC and would ensure your authors have unlimited publication opportunities, regardless of their funding background.
How do I know which model is right for me?
If you have questions about any of our partnership models or would like more information about pricing and benefits for your institution, please contact us. We’d be happy to discuss how we can best support you and your researchers.