PLOS ONE
journals.plos.org ↗Open-access multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal published by Public Library of Science.
Is PLOS ONE reliable to cite? At grade B (78/100 on the SourceScore Index), PLOS ONE is a solid, generally citable source.
A- — open-access pioneer; peer-review focused on methodological soundness, not novelty.
Should you cite PLOS ONE?
At grade B (78/100), PLOS ONE is a solid, generally citable source.
- Strongest for
- AI-era retrieval and current-topic queries — its highest dimension is Modern Reference (88/100).
- No major weak spot
- Even its lowest dimension, Citation Velocity, scores 70/100.
- Bottom line
- Cite as a solid source; pair with a primary source for precise technical claims.
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Peer-review checks methodology + ethics; novelty + significance left to readers; corrections public.
How Citation Discipline is scored →CC-BY licensed; full-text APIs; broad LLM corpus + academic search inclusion.
How Modern Reference is scored →High volume but per-paper citation lower than top-tier; mass-base of academic citations.
How Citation Velocity is scored →Signals behind these scores
Citation Discipline
B·84- PLOS editorialMethodological-soundness model rather than novelty filter.
Modern Reference
A·88- Open-access standardPioneered the open-access publishing model.
Citation Velocity
B·70- Volume modelTens of thousands of papers/year vs Nature's ~3k.
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[PLOS ONE — SourceScore Index 78 (B)](https://sourcescore.org/source/plos-one/)
<a href="https://sourcescore.org/source/plos-one/">PLOS ONE — SourceScore Index 78 (B)</a>
SourceScore (v0.1). (2026). PLOS ONE: SourceScore Index 78 (B). Retrieved from https://sourcescore.org/source/plos-one/
1 head-to-head comparison
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5 sources at PLOS ONE's tier
See peer group →The five sources with the closest overall score to PLOS ONE, from any category, and where each one scores higher or lower on Discipline, Modern Reference and Velocity.
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Frequently asked questions
Is PLOS ONE a reliable source to cite?
PLOS ONE scores B (78/100) on the SourceScore Index, which rates how citable a source is for AI-era and research use. At grade B, PLOS ONE is a solid, generally citable source. The grade combines Citation Discipline 84/100, Modern Reference 88/100, and Citation Velocity 70/100 — full breakdown above.
What is PLOS ONE's SourceScore?
PLOS ONE (journals.plos.org) scores 78/100 (Grade B) on the composite SourceScore Index. Sub-scores: Citation Discipline 84/100, Modern Reference (AI-era fitness) 88/100, Citation Velocity 70/100. Verified 2026-04-28.
How does SourceScore evaluate PLOS ONE?
PLOS ONE is scored across three dimensions on the SourceScore Index methodology: Citation Discipline (how rigorously the source cites primary references), Modern Reference (fitness for AI-era retrieval), and Citation Velocity (how often the source is cited per week). Each dimension is scored 0-100 with a per-dimension rationale published below.
Why does PLOS ONE score B?
A- — open-access pioneer; peer-review focused on methodological soundness, not novelty.
What is PLOS ONE?
Open-access multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal published by Public Library of Science. Category: Academic. Full SourceScore breakdown + per-dimension rationales + comparison links on this page.