Research Analysis & Policy

Open Access

Published October 23, 2019 Curated Collections

In keeping with our primary mission of making the world’s scientific and medical literature a public resource, PLOS periodically publishes articles that explore the issues surrounding open access. Selected articles - collected from the PLOS journals - are featured to highlight key issues relating to open access.

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Open Access Policy
Benefits of Open Access
History of Open Access

Open Access Policy

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Science Europe

PLOS Biology Evolution or revolution? Changing the way science is published and communicated
June 4, 2019 Buzz Baum, Enrico Coen
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Science Europe

PLOS Medicine Science Without Publication Paywalls: cOAlition S for the Realisation of Full and Immediate Open Access
September 4, 2018 Marc Schiltz
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PLOS ONE In an Age of Open Access to Research Policies: Physician and Public Health NGO Staff Research Use and Policy Awareness
July 22, 2015 Laura L. Moorhead, Cheryl Holzmeyer, Lauren A. Maggio, Ryan M. Steinberg, John Willinsky
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10.1371/journal.pbio.1001691

PLOS Biology Architecting the Future of Research Communication: Building the Models and Analytics for an Open Access Future
October 22, 2013 Cameron Neylon
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PLOS

PLOS Computational Biology Let’s Make Those Book Chapters Open Too!
February 21, 2013 Philip E. Bourne
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PLOS Biology Why Full Open Access Matters
November 29, 2011 Michael W. Carroll
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10.1371/journal.pmed.1001016

PLOS Medicine Towards Open and Equitable Access to Research and Knowledge for Development
March 29, 2011 Leslie Chan, Barbara Kirsop, Subbiah Arunachalam
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PLOS Medicine On the Path to Global Open Access: A Few More Miles to Go
March 29, 2011 The PLoS Medicine Editors
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PLOS Computational Biology ISCB Public Policy Statement on Open Access to Scientific and Technical Research Literature
February 24, 2011 Richard H. Lathrop, Burkhard Rost, ISCB Membership , ISCB Executive Committee , ISCB Board of Directors , ISCB Public Affairs Committee
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Public domain

PLOS Biology Institutional Open Access Funds: Now Is the Time
May 25, 2010 Charles D. Eckman, Beth T. Weil
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PLOS Biology University Public-Access Mandates Are Good for Science
November 10, 2009 David Shulenburger
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Public domain

PLOS Biology Equity for Open-Access Journal Publishing
August 4, 2009 Stuart M. Shieber
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Public domain

PLOS Biology The Publisher’s Pushback against NIH’s Public Access and Scholarly Publishing Sustainability
January 27, 2009 John Willinsky
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PLOS Medicine Next Stop, Don’t Block the Doors: Opening Up Access to Clinical Trials Results
July 15, 2008 The PLoS Medicine Editors
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PLOS Biology Progress toward Public Access to Science
April 8, 2008 Harold Varmus
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PLOS Computational Biology Open Access: Taking Full Advantage of the Content
March 28, 2008 Philip E. Bourne, J. Lynn Fink, Mark Gerstein
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PLOS Medicine Could an Open-Source Clinical Trial Data-Management System Be What We Have All Been Looking For?
March 4, 2008 Greg W Fegan, Trudie A Lang
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PLOS Biology When Is Open Access Not Open Access?
October 16, 2007 Catriona J MacCallum
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PLOS Biology Open Access to Research Is in the Public Interest
February 13, 2007 Bevin P Engelward, Richard J Roberts
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PLOS Medicine The Impact of Open Access upon Public Health
May 30, 2006 The PLoS Medicine Editors
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10.1371/journal.ppat.0010021

PLOS Pathogens Open-Access Science: A Necessity for Global Public Health
October 28, 2005 Josefina Coloma, Eva Harris
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PLOS Biology Whose Copy? Whose Rights?
July 13, 2004 Andy Gass, Helen Doyle, Rebecca Kennison
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PLOS Biology Who Pays for Open Access?
April 13, 2004 Helen Doyle, Andy Gass, Rebecca Kennison

Benefits of Open Access

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10.1371/journal.pbio.1002614

PLOS Biology Imagining the “open” university: Sharing scholarship to improve research and education
October 24, 2017 Erin C. McKiernan
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10.1371/journal.pone.0165359

PLOS ONE Open-Access Mega-Journals: A Bibliometric Profile
November 18, 2016 Simon Wakeling, Peter Willett, Claire Creaser, Jenny Fry, Stephen Pinfield, Valérie Spezi
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fdecomite

PLOS ONE Quality Assessment of Studies Published in Open Access and Subscription Journals: Results of a Systematic Evaluation
May 11, 2016 Roberta Pastorino, Sonja Milovanovic, Jovana Stojanovic, Ljupcho Efremov, Rosarita Amore, Stefania Boccia
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10.1371/journal.pone.0159614

PLOS ONE The Post-Embargo Open Access Citation Advantage: It Exists (Probably), It’s Modest (Usually), and the Rich Get Richer (of Course)
August 22, 2016 Jim Ottaviani
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PLOS ONE Open Access Meets Discoverability: Citations to Articles Posted to Academia.edu
February 17, 2016 Yuri Niyazov, Carl Vogel, Richard Price, Ben Lund, David Judd, Adnan Akil, Michael Mortonson, Josh Schwartzman, Max Shron
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Public domain

PLOS ONE Peer Review Quality and Transparency of the Peer-Review Process in Open Access and Subscription Journals
January 29, 2016 Jelte M. Wicherts
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10.1371/journal.pone.0013636

PLOS ONE Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research
October 18, 2010 Yassine Gargouri, Chawki Hajjem, Vincent Larivière, Yves Gingras, Les Carr, Tim Brody, Stevan Harnad
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10.1371/journal.pone.0012704

PLOS ONE Systematic Characterizations of Text Similarity in Full Text Biomedical Publications
September 15, 2010 Zhaohui Sun, Mounir Errami, Tara Long, Chris Renard, Nishant Choradia, Harold Garner
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10.1371/journal.pone.0009619

PLOS ONE Full Text and Figure Display Improves Bioscience Literature Search
April 14, 2010 Anna Divoli, Michael A. Wooldridge, Marti A. Hearst
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10.1371/journal.pmed.1000158

PLOS Medicine Global Health Delivery 2.0: Using Open-Access Technologies for Transparency and Operations Research
December 1, 2009 Duncan Smith-Rohrberg Maru, Aditya Sharma, Jason Andrews, Sanjay Basu, Jhapat Thapa, Shefali Oza, Chhitij Bashyal, Bibhav Acharya, Ryan Schwarz
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10.1371/journal.pone.0007078

PLOS ONE Empirical Study of Data Sharing by Authors Publishing in PLoS Journals
September 18, 2009 Caroline J. Savage, Andrew J. Vickers
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10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000361

PLOS Computational Biology Adventures in Semantic Publishing: Exemplar Semantic Enhancements of a Research Article
April 17, 2009 David Shotton, Katie Portwin, Graham Klyne, Alistair Miles
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10.1371/journal.pone.0000308

PLOS ONE Sharing Detailed Research Data Is Associated with Increased Citation Rate
March 21, 2007 Heather A. Piwowar, Roger S. Day, Douglas B. Fridsma
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10.1371/journal.pbio.0040157

PLOS Biology Citation Advantage of Open Access Articles
May 16, 2006 Gunther Eysenbach

History of Open Access

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10.1371/journal.pone.0110268

PLOS ONE The Dawn of Open Access to Phylogenetic Data
October 24, 2014 Andrew F. Magee, Michael R. May, Brian R. Moore
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Brett Jordan, Flickr

PLOS Biology The Open Access Movement Grows Up: Taking Stock of a Revolution
October 22, 2013 Heather Joseph
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PLOS ONE Remarkable Growth of Open Access in the Biomedical Field: Analysis of PubMed Articles from 2006 to 2010
May 1, 2013 Keiko Kurata, Tomoko Morioka, Keiko Yokoi, Mamiko Matsubayashi
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PLOS ONE Open Access to the Scientific Journal Literature: Situation 2009
June 23, 2010 Bo-Christer Björk, Patrik Welling, Mikael Laakso, Peter Majlender, Turid Hedlund, Guðni Guðnason
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PLOS Biology Why PLoS Became a Publisher
October 13, 2003 Patrick O Brown, Michael B Eisen, Harold E Varmus