2022 Financial Overview
The landscape of Open Science is continually evolving which means PLOS is continually learning and improving on how we advance research transparency, integrity, and trust. Today, the conversation around Open Science, including topics such as accessible data, use of preprints, and accurate credit extends far beyond publishers and academia. It’s clear that accessible, trusted research is a critical element to how we drive progress as a society, an organization, or as individuals.
Last year we began laying the foundation for a more global PLOS community. In 2022, we continued to water these seeds, investing in building a strong foundation for the new opportunities and challenges we’ll meet in this next era of Open Science.
Uniting diverse communities around open and rigorous research
A focus of our work in 2022—which will continue into the future—is ensuring that we are investing in the infrastructure that enables us to deliver rigorous, open research to a diverse audience across our portfolio. Whether that means improvements in the author submission experience, adapting to new challenges in order to safeguard and strengthen research integrity, or committing to actions that further the real-world impact of the research we publish.
This year we celebrated the first 1,000 papers published across five new titles launched in 2021—a significant milestone for PLOS. These new journals represent research and researchers from across the globe, and aim to forge connections between diverse disciplines and experts addressing critical issues for human health and the health of our planet.
Financial barriers as a result of the dominant Open Access APC model remain a top concern for researchers and a focus of innovation at PLOS as we work to make Open Science publishing more equitable. In 2022, we doubled our institutional partnerships that reduce or eliminate the burden of Open Access costs for authors. We were also delighted to partner with the Einstein Foundation in Berlin to honor researchers demonstrating rigor, reliability, robustness, and transparency in their work.
Joining—and learning from—global discussion
As the possibilities of Open Science, and expectations for researchers, change around the world, it’s important that we collaborate globally to learn from and connect with all stakeholders in scholarly communication—from early career researchers to institutional leaders to policy makers.
Last year we partnered with TCC Africa to work towards our shared goals of increasing awareness of the benefits of Open Science for researchers across the African continent, and influencing Open Science policy at the national, regional, and institutional level. This year, we expanded our partnerships to AAU and EASTECO. One of our first joint efforts with TCC and AAU is a series of workshops for institutional leaders focusing on increasing awareness and providing training around Open Science practices and Open Access publishing. We also established a new regional hub in Singapore which will enable us to work more closely with research stakeholders in Asia.
Measuring our progress towards accelerating Open Science
Perhaps our biggest achievement of the year, PLOS partnered with DataSeer to develop Open Science Indicators—a framework for measuring Open Science behaviors such as preprint posting, data-sharing, and code-sharing in a standardized way. The new framework and analysis of the data from PLOS articles as well as a sample of comparator articles will enable us to better understand the state of Open Science practice today, and identify ways in which we can drive measurable, meaningful change in support of best practices.
With grant support provided by the Wellcome Trust, we also continued two trials to increase data accessibility. We also shared our findings from the first year of our mandatory code-sharing policy at PLOS Computational Biology as well as the results of our investigation into code-sharing needs and behaviors more broadly. All data from our Open Science Indicators project and other research by PLOS is openly available to the public. search communication more open, effective and fair.
2022 Highlights (see figures below for a fuller picture)
- As of December 31st, 2022, PLOS had net assets of $25.9 million, improved by more than $1 million compared to the previous year’s $24.5 million.
- Of the 2022 year-end net assets, cash and unrestricted investments totaled $14.7 million compared to $16 million at year-end 2021.
- For the year ending December 31, 2022 PLOS generated total revenues of $32.3 million compared to total revenues of $37.7 million in 2021.The changes are primarily driven by the forgiveness of $2.6 million PPP loan in 2021 which resulted in higher revenue for that year.
- 2022 total expenses of $33.3 million compared with $32.5 million in 2021.