Making a home for the Physical Sciences and Engineering in PLOS ONE

Calling all physicists, chemists, earth scientists, computer scientists and engineers: help PLOS ONE make
science more open, more reproducible and more transparent.

PLOS ONE is known for its multi- and interdisciplinary approach. The journal is open for papers in all areas of science. From particle physics to pulmonology, we particularly welcome papers that break down barriers between disciplines. Historically speaking, however, most of our initiatives and publications have focused on biomedical topics. Given that all of PLOS’ founders came from biomedical fields, this focus arose organically.

But PLOS ONE’s approach to consider all rigorous research irrespective of impact and PLOS’ commitment to driving innovations in Open Science and Open Access in a non-profit framework have always attracted a diverse group of researchers and disciplines. Indeed, communities in physics, chemistry, earth sciences, computer sciences and engineering have adopted PLOS ONE as an outlet of choice in the past. We have published influential papers on complex networks, 3D printing, polymer chemistry, climate change and machine learning, to name but a few topics.

To build on these strengths, PLOS ONE has created a Physical Sciences and Engineering team as part of a wider effort to better serve our communities through subject-specific in-house editorial groups. The team is led by me, Division Editor Leonie Mueck (Physics, Computer Science, Engineering). I am proud to present the team working beside me:

Associate Editor Victoria Black (Earth Sciences)
Associate Editor Helen Howard (Chemistry and Materials Science)
You can meet us at many 2018 conferences, including the ACS National Meeting, MACRO2018, Goldschmidt2018, the 2018 MRS Fall Meeting, the 2018 AGU Fall Meeting, and NetSci 2018.

Physical Sciences and Engineering is a vast remit and we are building an experienced editorial board in the different research fields, an editorial family which you are invited to join as an Academic Editor. PLOS ONE is a journal that is run by the community for the community, and we invite researchers in the field to join us in our efforts.

Together with some of these communities, we have already started working on various editorial projects:

In consultation with new and veteran editorial board members, we have launched two Calls for Papers, in Machine Learning in Health and Biomedicine and in Open Quantum Computation and Simulation, for which we expect authors to share their source code as well as their data.
On 25 April, 10-11am Pacific Daylight Time, we will be discussing why and how researchers should share their code on Twitter using the hashtag #ShareYourCode and invite everyone to join. Connect with me on twitter @LeonieMueck if you are active on social media.
To support the younger generation of scientists in these disciplines we have recently launched the PLOS ONE Early Career Researcher Travel Award in the Physical Sciences.
In the PLOS Channel “Responding to Climate Change”, one of our Section Editors and his colleagues are curating an interdisciplinary community resource on climate change.
Going forward, PLOS ONE’s new website design will help in showcasing content from the different Physical Sciences and Engineering disciplines.
There are more projects in Physical Sciences and Engineering in the pipeline, and we are committed to sharing our progress with you as we move forward. We want to hear from you, the researchers in these communities. Share your thoughts and help us shape physical sciences and engineering at PLOS ONE! Your perspectives will help shape future projects, topics for calls for papers and how to support you with Open Science initiatives. Please fill out this form if you want to share your ideas with us.

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