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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Research metrics

PLOS is proud to play a role in helping researchers maximize the visibility and impact of their work, advance scientific discovery, and increase open science adoption within the communities we serve.

Everything we publish is immediately and freely accessible to readers everywhere, and we work tirelessly to increase adoption of open science practices that facilitate research transparency, reproducibility, and reuse.

PLOS is a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA)

Aligned with our core mission and as a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), PLOS has always advocated for improving the ways in which the outputs of scientific research are evaluated. Central to this commitment is a reduction in the reliance on the Journal Impact Factor™, and driving towards research assessment based on article-level metrics.

Journal and article-level metrics^

We recognize that authors are often required to meet specific expectations, and rely on a range of metrics to determine a journal’s suitability for their work. All of our journals have a range of metrics available, including SJR, CiteScore, and h-index. More specific metrics on publication timings and acceptance rates are included below. 

In line with our DORA commitment the Journal Impact Factor™ is not provided. 

We encourage all authors who publish in a PLOS journal to track their personal article-level-metrics including views and citations, along with using our Altmetric integration to track news, policy, and social media mentions. Our two newest journals, PLOS Complex Systems and PLOS Mental Health, opened for submissions in 2023. The first articles in these journals published in 2024, and this page will be updated once more information is available.*

Citations: 54,331
Time to first decision: 6 days
Time to publication: 230 days
Acceptance rate: 11%
Number of publications: 467

Citations: 544
Time to first decision: 64 days
Time to publication: 230 days
Acceptance rate: 59%
Number of publications: 162

Citations: 58,222
Time to first decision: 45 days
Time to publication: 221 days
Acceptance rate: 37%
Number of publications: 702

Citations: N/A*
Time to first decision: 21 days
Time to publication: N/A*
Acceptance rate: 0%
Number of publications: N/A*

Citations: 2,054
Time to first decision: 67 days
Time to publication: 243 days
Acceptance rate: 47%
Number of publications: 196

Citations: 63,812
Time to first decision: 19 days
Time to publication: 184 days
Acceptance rate: 29%
Number of publications: 403

Citations:2,908
Time to first decision: 61 days
Time to publication: 224 days
Acceptance rate: 54%
Number of publications: 1,014

Citations: 55,789
Time to first decision: 2 days
Time to publication: 230 days
Acceptance rate: 3.7%
Number of publications: 163

Citations: N/A*
Time to first decision: 13 days
Time to publication: N/A* 
Acceptance rate: 0%
Number of publications: N/A*

Citations: 46,214
Time to first decision: 47 days
Time to publication: 193 days
Acceptance rate: 46%
Number of publications: 664

Citations: 1,037,367
Time to first decision: 45 days
Time to publication: 204 days
Acceptance rate: 39%
Number of publications: 14,489

Citations: 65,611
Time to first decision: 22 days
Time to publication: 167 days
Acceptance rate: 28%
Number of publications: 642

Citations: 182
Time to first decision: 63 days
Time to publication: 276 days
Acceptance rate: 31%
Number of publications: 36

Citations: 201
Time to first decision: 64 days
Time to publication: 204 days
Acceptance rate: 68%
Number of publications: 96

^ All metrics are for 2023. 2024 metrics will be available in July 2025. This page will be updated annually. Citation data sourced from Digital Science’s Dimensions platform, available at https://app.dimensions.ai. Time to first decision (TTFD) and time to publication (TTP) are median average calculations from PLOS data. Acceptance rate is an average percentage, and number of publications refers to the total articles published in the named journal.

Open Science Indicators

Open Science Indicators are a tool developed by PLOS in collaboration with DataSeer to measure open science behaviors in a standardized way. OSIs enable us to better understand the state of open science practice today and identify ways in which we can further advance adoption of best practices. The metrics below represent open science behaviors across articles published in PLOS journals in 2023, and are updated every year. The 2024 metrics will be available in July 2025.

Data shared in a repository

29%

versus 20% at comparators

Code shared of code generated

42%

versus 24% at comparators

Preprint sharing

24%

versus 28% at comparators

Find out more about the latest Open Science Indicators results

Definitions of metrics used at PLOS

Open Science Indicators

PLOS partnered with DataSeer to develop Open Science Indicators (OSIs) as a framework for measuring specific open science characteristics and behaviors observable in published research articles.

PLOS publishes detailed data for all journal titles, as well as comparator data points each quarter. You can download the full dataset here.

The proportion of research articles published in the given year where research data produced or analyzed by the study has been detected in a data repository and linked to the article.

The proportion of research articles published in the given year where publicly available code associated with the study has been detected, shown as a percentage of articles that generated code.

The proportion of all published research articles in the given year where a preprint version of the article has been detected.

Journal metrics

A number of journal-level metrics from various indexers have emerged over recent years in an effort to broaden the evaluation of scholarly journals. We encourage authors to utilize a variety of factors in determining the right journal for their research.

Article-level-metrics are quantifiable measures at the article level that document the many ways in which both scientists and the general public engage with published research. PLOS articles display views, discussions, saves, and recommendations. Altmetric.com describes the sources for their data here.

The SJR measures weighted citations received by the journal. Weightings depend on the subject field and prestige (SJR) of the citing journal and in general, self-citations are not included in the calculation and citation weighting.

The average citations per document that a journal receives over a three-year period. It is calculated as the number of citations received in the given year to documents published in the previous three years, divided by the number of documents for the three years.

h-Index
The h-index measures both productivity and citation impact of publications. It is calculated by counting the number of publications for which an author has been cited by other authors at least that same number of times – for example, a h-index of 20 would indicate 20 articles, each cited at least 20 times.

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