Since 2006,
PLOS ONE has published >200,000 articles, providing an inclusive home for primary research spanning all scientific disciplines and representing researchers from around the globe. As reflected in the journal’s
publication criteria and
policies,
PLOS ONE is strongly committed to upholding high ethical standards for the conduct and reporting of scientific research. We are a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (
COPE), and we welcome readers, authors, editors, and reviewers to write to the journal office if they have concerns about the scientific validity or integrity of our submissions or publications. Journal staff follow up on all concerns raised to the journal per COPE guidelines.
The journal has always worked to implement systematic approaches to identify and address publication ethics concerns in our submissions. For example, we use software tools to highlight text overlap with published works, similarities to previous
PLOS ONE submissions, and authorship changes during peer review, and we
require authors to make underlying data available to enable full transparency as to the basis of published results. In recent years, we have centralized and increased editorial resources devoted to research and publication integrity, and in January 2018 formed a dedicated
Publication Ethics Editorial team. This team currently includes three Senior Editors who have scientific research backgrounds as well as specialized expertise in research integrity standards, policies, and workflows. Our Publication Ethics Editors address ethical and scientific concerns involving
PLOS ONE submissions and published articles, and also aim to raise awareness of publication ethics standards, develop policies and processes by which we can address integrity issues (at scale) prior to publication, and participate in broader discussions with researchers and publishers pertaining to publication ethics policies and practices.
