What is a Viewpoint?

As a global, non-profit publisher of scientific and medical research, PLOS is a public facing organization. Our staff and members of the community who are involved with us speak at conferences; give interviews to the media and engage with social media on a variety of issues. We value these interactions because they give us the opportunity to voice our mission and values.

Being in the public eye means that we receive a lot of questions about what we do and why we do it. To help others achieve greater clarity on issues and initiatives important to PLOS we are introducing “PLOS Viewpoints.”

A Viewpoint will be an essay or statement that reflects PLOS’ position on a relevant topic, whether it’s the reasons behind our use of the CC-BY license or why we believe Article Level Metrics (ALMs) is the best way to assess the impact of research. The primary focus of Viewpoints is to educate and inform.

Our inaugural Viewpoint is about a new PLOS program called Global Participation Initiative in which we are encouraging submissions from researchers around the world regardless of their financial resources.