PUBLIC LIBRARY OF SCIENCE

Their core work

Public Library of Science (PLOS) is a nonprofit open-access publisher that operates a suite of peer-reviewed scientific journals — most notably PLOS ONE — and has published hundreds of thousands of research articles across biology, medicine, and interdisciplinary science. Within the EU research ecosystem, PLOS participates as an infrastructure actor in the scholarly communication layer: they bring deep expertise in how research outputs are identified, linked, and made discoverable at scale. Their H2020 involvement focused specifically on persistent identifier (PID) infrastructure — the technical plumbing that connects authors, institutions, funders, publications, and datasets across the open science landscape. For a consortium building around open research infrastructure, PLOS represents a publisher-side practitioner who actually runs production systems at global scale.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

PLOS entered H2020 through THOR (2015–2017), a project focused on establishing the human and technical foundations for open research infrastructure — broad in scope and oriented toward making the case for unified identifier systems. Their second project, FREYA (2017–2020), shows a sharper focus: connected identifiers specifically for discovery, access, and use of research resources, with explicit keywords around e-infrastructure and research data. The trajectory is from foundational advocacy to operational implementation of PID ecosystems. With only two projects and both in the same thematic cluster, the evolution is less a pivot and more a deepening — PLOS moved from helping define the problem space to building the connected infrastructure that solves it.

PLOS is moving deeper into the PID and research data interoperability layer — a logical direction as EU open science mandates (Plan S, Horizon Europe data requirements) make identifier infrastructure increasingly central to compliance and discoverability.

How they like to work

PLOS consistently joins as a participant rather than leading consortia — a pattern that reflects their role as a practitioner stakeholder rather than a research coordinator. Their two projects both sit in mid-to-large infrastructure consortia (14 unique partners across 7 countries), suggesting they are comfortable operating within complex multi-actor networks. Working with PLOS likely means engaging a publisher who brings real production systems and policy credibility, but who will expect consortium leadership to come from a research institute or infrastructure body.

PLOS has collaborated with 14 unique partners across 7 countries through their two H2020 projects, a relatively broad reach for just two participations — suggesting these were large, well-networked consortia. As a US-based NGO active in European infrastructure projects, their network bridges the transatlantic open science community.

What sets them apart

PLOS is unusual in this space because they are not a university, research institute, or technology company — they are a working publisher who has processed and disseminated millions of research outputs and lives inside the problems that PID infrastructure is meant to solve. This gives them a practitioner credibility that purely technical or policy partners cannot replicate. For any consortium working on open science infrastructure, scholarly communication reform, or research data interoperability, PLOS offers the rare combination of nonprofit mission alignment and global operational scale.

Highlights from their portfolio

• FREYA
  FREYA (2017–2020) represents PLOS's deepest engagement with EU infrastructure — a multi-country RIA that tackled the connected identifier layer for research discovery, placing PLOS at the center of the emerging PID ecosystem that now underpins Horizon Europe data requirements.
• THOR
  THOR was PLOS's entry into EU infrastructure consortia, establishing their role as a publisher voice in the foundational debate about how open research infrastructure should be technically and institutionally organized.