everyONE – the PLoS ONE community blog

One of PLoS’s missions is to make the research we publish more accessible to the public and to educators and one way that we do this is by helping authors to highlight their work to the media on the publication of their paper. PLoS ONE articles regularly appear in the international media; on this page, we summarize how we publicize the papers we publish and try to engage journalists, bloggers and the general public.

PLoS ONE Media Contact

Authors, press officers and journalists with any questions about PLoS ONE’s press and media relations should contact Jen Laloup; you can reach her at press [at] plos.org or:

Jen Laloup (US)
Tel +1 (415) 624 1220
Email: jlaloup [at] plos.org

Information for Authors and Press Officers

As so many papers are published each week in PLoS ONE and we can only highlight a limited number, we focus on those we perceive to be most likely to appeal to a broad selection of media.

A select group of PLoS ONE staff regularly discusses recently accepted articles and tries to predict which ones stand the best chance of getting picked up by the media. It’s often possible to work out which papers are likely to garner the most media attention.The press often enjoys slightly quirky studies (from flying fungi to grunting worms), paleontology (including the Nigersaurus) and those on topical issues, such as climate change and biodiversity, although this is hardly a comprehensive list of examples.

Once the choices have been made, Jen Laloup contacts the authors to ask whether they are interested in sending us a press release to help disseminate their research on publication. Authors sometimes contact Jen directly (jlaloup [at] plos.org), having already discussed the idea of press releasing the paper with their media office. We encourage authors to do this as early as possible so that we can plan appropriately. If authors plan to write their own press release, we suggest they refer to this blog post, which contains some helpful tips for producing a good release.

We work with the authors on the release until we are satisfied that it is ready to be sent to our press mailing list under our journal name and also post on the science news site, EurekAlert. We only distribute press releases once we are confident that the information contains no false, misleading or sensational claims and so all releases are approved by one of our staff editors before we can confirm whether we will distribute them. Our press list goes out to over 350 of the world’s best known scientific journalists and science writers. We also allow trusted bloggers to receive our press releases under the same embargo conditions as journalists and science writers and are one of the only journals in the world to do so.

Although we cannot distribute press releases for all of the papers we publish, we are happy to assist authors of all papers (and the press officers at their institutions) by providing publication dates, embargo times, the URL of the published article and other information ahead of the publication.

Information for Journalists and Bloggers

PLoS ONE issues press releases to publicize some of the papers we publish in advance of their publication. Our press releases include: relevant author contacts, a preview link to the published article and links to any related images or multimedia available for press use. We also provide the location of the final URL where the open-access articles will appear after the embargo ends and we encourage everyone on our press list to include these links in any online versions of the stories they write so that readers can easily access the original study. Please note, the name of the journal is PLoS ONE not “Public Library of Science One.”

Please contact press [at] plos.org if you would like to be added to our press list and to receive embargoed copies of press releases for all the PLoS journals or if you have any other questions.

Embargo Policy

PLoS ONE articles are embargoed until 5 p.m. Pacific Time (8 p.m. Eastern Time), USA, on the working day before publication. This is the time when the article becomes available online, allowing the public to read the open-access article at the same time as it is reported in the media. For full details and conditions of the PLoS media embargo policy, please see this web page and contact Jen Laloup (press [at] plos.org) with any questions.

PLoS ONE in the Media:

Since our launch in 2006, PLoS ONE articles have been covered by the international media on a regular basis – our authors’ research was once featured in The New York Times six weeks in a row.  Our papers also receive extensive coverage in the blogosphere and on social aggregation sites, such as Digg and Slashdot. You can read regular updates of recent coverage via the Media category of this blog.  A more detailed list of our news and blog coverage is available on our Media Archive page. For media updates prior to 2009, see the In the News channel of the PLoS Blog, where you will also find a round-up of some of PLoS ONE’s media coverage in 2008. See also an archive of our press releases on EurekAlert.

So, how do we get this kind of attention for our authors’ work?

There are a few reasons why journalists gravitate towards PLoS ONE stories:

• The science that our authors produce is often first rate and interesting to a broad audience
• We prepare well-balanced releases that are concise and clear about the often complex science involved
• All our articles are open access so reporters can reuse the figures in the article, without permission from us or the authors, as long as they give the appropriate attribution
• Their readers can then read the original article online, freely and in full!

Here are some typical author comments about our press process:

Author Clinton Jenkins, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States – “We estimate news coverage of the article to be over 200 international newspapers in the first 36 hours”.

Author Tom Kaye, Department of Paleontology, Burke Museum of Natural History, Seattle, Washington, United States of America – “Our paper created a global firestorm – every newswire ran the story, it was on the internet as well as the printed papers”.