plos.org

PLOS

Who runs PLOS, what it tracks and what it costs, and the 20 closest open-access academic publishing alternatives.

Who’s behind it
Not stated
Online since
Unknown
Trackers
Prices
No pricing page
Last price change
–
Closest alternative
PeerJ

Measured from PLOS’s own pages, the Internet Archive and public records. Hover a dotted value for its source and date.

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01 · Who’s behind it

Who runs PLOS

PLOS plos.org

Discover how we are transforming scholarly publishing with a mission-driven commitment to open science, research integrity, and innovation that benefits researchers, institutions, and society worldwide.

Wikidata: nonprofit open-access publisher

Company
No imprint we could read
Online since
Not in the Internet Archive
Audience
In English

02 · Privacy

What PLOS tracks

What the homepage loads before you accept or decline cookies. A cookie banner should hold most of it back until you agree, and a tag manager can load more that we don’t see.

trackers that follow visitors

10 of the 13 alternatives below have fewer, 0 have more.

Privacy-friendly alternatives →
Cookie banner
None found
US company
3 tools
  • Advertising and retargeting

    Lets ad networks recognise visitors on other sites and show them ads.

  • Marketing and email tracking

    Links visits to email campaigns and customer profiles.

  • Third-party embeds

    Videos, maps or fonts from other companies, which receive the visitor’s IP address.

03 · Alternatives

Alternatives to PLOS

Thumbs up if it’s a real alternative to PLOS, thumbs down if it isn’t.

Fewer trackers than PLOSNo ad trackersRegistered in the EUFree planOnly in English

20 of the 60 sites closest to PLOS match.

  1. 01
    frontiersin.org Top 1K English No trackers

    Frontiers | Publisher of peer-reviewed articles in open access journals

    Open access publisher of peer-reviewed scientific articles across the entire spectrum of academia. Research network for academics to stay up-to-date with the latest scientific publications, events, blogs and news.

    Compare frontiersin.org with PLOS →
  2. 02
    AAAS aaas.org English 2 trackers

    AAAS Home | American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

    international non-profit organization promoting science

    Compare AAAS with PLOS →
  3. 03
    OSF osf.io Top 10K English 1 tracker

    OSF

    tools that make open science practice easier

    Compare OSF with PLOS →
  4. 04
    KFF kff.org English 2 trackers

    KFF - The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.

    KFF is the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism. Our mission is to serve as a nonpartisan source of information for policymakers, the media, the health policy community, and the public.

    Compare KFF with PLOS →
  5. 05
    Crossref crossref.org Top 10K English 1 tracker

    Crossref

    Crossref is open infrastructure linking the world's research. 26,500 members, 171 countries, 2.1 billion monthly API queries.

    Compare Crossref with PLOS →
  6. 06
    TYPO3 typo3.org English 1 tracker

    TYPO3 Project and Governance — Democratic Open Source - TYPO3 Project

    The TYPO3 project is a volunteer community backed by a not-for-profit member association, and a fully-owned service company.

    Compare TYPO3 with PLOS →
  7. 07
    Springer Science+Business Media springer.com Top 1K English No trackers

    Client Challenge

    global publishing company

    Compare Springer Science+Business Media with PLOS →
  8. 08
    MedlinePlus medlineplus.gov Top 10K English 1 tracker

    MedlinePlus - Health Information from the National Library of Medicine

    Find information on health conditions, wellness issues, and more in easy-to-read language on MedlinePlus, the up-to-date, trusted health information site from the NIH and the National Library of Medicine.

    Compare MedlinePlus with PLOS →
  9. 09
    MariaDB mariadb.org Top 10K English 1 tracker

    MariaDB Foundation - MariaDB.org

    database management system, relational, open source, community developed fork of MySQL

    Compare MariaDB with PLOS →
  10. 10
    DataCite datacite.org English No trackers

    DataCite – Connecting Research, Advancing Knowledge - DataCite

    international not-for-profit organization which aims to improve data citation

    Compare DataCite with PLOS →
  11. 11
    SINTEF sintef.no English 1 tracker

    SINTEF - Applied research, technology and innovation

    SINTEF is one of Europe's largest independent research organisations. Every year we carry out several thousand projects for customers large and small.

    Compare SINTEF with PLOS →
  12. 12
    Wikimedia wikimedia.org Top 1K English No trackers

    Wikimedia

    The Wikimedia movement is a global community of people, projects, and activities working together to create and share knowledge freely.

    Compare Wikimedia with PLOS →
  13. 13
    OpenStack openstack.org English No trackers

    Open Source Cloud Computing Infrastructure - OpenStack

    Deployed by thousands. Proven production at scale. OpenStack is a set of software components that provide common services for cloud infrastructure.

    Compare OpenStack with PLOS →
  14. 14
    Privacy Guides privacyguides.org English No trackers

    Privacy Guides

    Established in 2021, Privacy Guides is the largest impartial, non-profit media outlet focused on finding privacy tools and learning about protecting your digital life.

    Compare Privacy Guides with PLOS →
  15. 15
    NBER nber.org Top 10K English 1 tracker

    National Bureau of Economic Research | NBER

    Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.

    Compare NBER with PLOS →
  16. 16
    Nature nature.com Top 1K English 1 tracker

    Nature

    First published in 1869, Nature is the world’s leading multidisciplinary science journal. Nature publishes the finest peer-reviewed research that drives ground-breaking discovery, and is read by thought-leaders and decision-makers around the world.

    Compare Nature with PLOS →
  17. 17
    Internet Archive archive.org Top 1K English No trackers

    Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

    U.S. non-profit organization and digital archive

    Compare Internet Archive with PLOS →
  18. 18
    ClinicalTrials.gov clinicaltrials.gov Top 10K English No trackers

    ClinicalTrials.gov

    United States government registry of clinical trials

    Compare ClinicalTrials.gov with PLOS →
  19. 19
    Joomla joomla.org Top 10K English 1 tracker

    Joomla Content Management System (CMS) - try it! It's free!

    Joomla! is the mobile-ready and user-friendly way to build your website. Choose from thousands of features and designs. Joomla! is free and open source.

    Compare Joomla with PLOS →
  20. 20
    Wiley-VCH wiley.com Top 1K English 1 tracker

    Wiley-VCH - Home

    Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim - A passion for publishing

    Compare Wiley-VCH with PLOS →

Closest first, by how much each site’s offer resembles PLOS’s. Trackers are counted the same way as above. Highlighted technologies are ones PLOS uses too. Votes and comments come from visitors and don’t change the order.

04 · History

No changes yet. Each new crawl is compared with the last one, and what PLOS adds, drops or rewrites shows up here.

05 · Details

How we measure

Alternatives are matched by what sites actually offer, from their homepages, Wikidata and a summary by Claude, in any language. Trackers and the rest of the stack come from the homepage’s code and DNS records.

The full technology stack, the competitor map and search numbers · 15 technologies
Neighbours
k = 60
Sites searched
9,212
Vector
384-d
Query
37 ms

Competitor map

Each alternative by how close its vector is to PLOS’s (x) and how much traffic it gets, how much of the stack it shares, or where it sits in the embedding space itself (y). Hover for the numbers, click to jump to it in the list.

similarity × popularity

WikimediaSINTEFDataCiteMedlinePlusTYPO3CrossrefKFFOSFAAASfrontiersin.org

Built with

CMS
JavaScript frameworks
  • React page source: data-reactroot
JavaScript libraries
  • jQuery asset https://plos.org/wp-content/themes/plos/resources/lib/scripts/jquery-3.5.1.min.js?ver=3.5…
Fonts
Advertising
Marketing automation
  • HubSpot page source: js.hs-scripts.com
CDN
Hosting
  • Kinsta header x-kinsta-cache: HIT
Languages & backends
  • PHP implied by WordPress (meta generator: WordPress 7.1.4)
Email hosting
Email delivery
  • SendGrid TXT v=spf1 mx a ip4:136.147.136.128 ip4:184.23.159.2 ip4:216.74.38.68 ip4…
DNS hosting
SaaS tools (verified in DNS)
  • Apple Business TXT apple-domain-verification=rD6IKpFy01dItKGF
  • Atlassian TXT atlassian-domain-verification=KBcW5CfwNLAM/0qR7EQaMQ6EpgX44xvccXJeJ0O…
  • Google Search Console TXT google-site-verification=g9PQGJfRFNffB4MEiJ_b7sA_J94yIXtFsQa0aHT3u5A