Aims & Scope

PLOS Currents is an Open Access, peer-reviewed platform which rapidly publishes research in progress as short-form articles or micro-publications (“micropubs”). Micropubs aim to present preliminary results at the level of a single experiment (or small set of experiments). These building blocks of research are shared as they are completed and evaluated on their own merit without the full narrative of a research article attached.

PLOS Currents micropubs can enable faster feedback and credit for results that accelerate the overall research cycle itself. They also enable researchers to get credit for all the work completed, not just experiments which eventually find a home in a journal research article.

As with all PLOS publications, the content is Open Access, peer-reviewed by an expert group of researchers, citable, and is permanently archived and indexed in PubMed Central and Scopus. There is currently no charge for publication.

Scope

Submissions to PLOS Currents is limited to four research topics at this time: Ecology, Neuroscience, Computational Biology, and Clinical Trial Interventions; with the view to expanding to a wider range of topics in the future.

At minimum, a micropub contains a single experiment, which must be correctly performed; properly controlled; and fully described. It may contain a discrete number of experiments, but a full-length research article is not considered eligible as a micropub when it describes a set of experiments linked together by a narrative. Emphasis should be placed on the results and data, rather than on the potential impacts and will not be judged on the basis of the likely significance of the work.

Please refer to the full PLOS Currents editorial policy [LINK] detailing the scope of micropubs, publication suitability, recommended formats, etc.

Aims

Share ongoing research:

  • To facilitate prompt review and publication of research findings by encouraging short-form articles of research in progress including single findings, negative results, and methods and protocols.

Minimize the delay between the generation and publication of research:

  • To deploy a streamlined peer-review process that decreases the time from submission to acceptance.
  • To publish articles immediately upon acceptance.
  • To provide rapid feedback and immediate credit for work completed.

Publish ALL experimental results:

  • To provide a forum where results will not be judged on the basis of research significance.
  • To emphasize results and data, rather than on the potential impacts.
  • To publish scientifically sound research which may otherwise go unpublished.

 

Publication Process

Micropub submissions are assigned to a member of our Editorial Board [LINK] who will determine whether a contribution is intelligible, relevant, ethical and scientifically credible, but will otherwise not impose restrictions on the nature, format or content of the contributions. The Editorial Board members may solicit additional external feedback on the submission as needed. Those submissions deemed appropriate are posted immediately at PLOS Currents and publicly archived at PubMed Central.

It is assumed that submissions will report preliminary data and analyses, and it will be possible to revise contributions, for example in light of new data. Such revisions will also be subject to approval by Review Board, and different versions of the same article will be identifiable and all versions will be archived and separately citable.

The content is published under a Creative Commons Attribution License, enabling unrestricted distribution and use of the published materials, provided that its authors are properly credited. Every accepted submission will receive a permanent identifier that can be linked to and cited in other publications.

PLOS Currents is an open-access publication from the Public Library of Science. The content in PLOS Currents is subject to the standard PLOS Terms of Use.