{
  "apiVersion": "v0.1",
  "methodology": "https://sourcescore.org/methodology/",
  "canonical": "https://sourcescore.org/compare/elife-vs-plos-one/",
  "summary": "Two open-access journal traditions — eLife's curated rigor vs PLOS ONE's volume-first model.",
  "a": {
    "slug": "elife",
    "name": "eLife",
    "domain": "elifesciences.org",
    "canonical": "https://sourcescore.org/source/elife/",
    "api": "https://sourcescore.org/api/source/elife.json",
    "scores": {
      "index": {
        "value": 83,
        "grade": "B",
        "rationale": "A — open-access + transparent peer-review; growing citation share in biology.",
        "signals": [
          {
            "label": "Composite",
            "detail": "Discipline 90 + Modern Reference 88 + Velocity 72."
          }
        ]
      },
      "discipline": {
        "value": 90,
        "grade": "A",
        "rationale": "Transparent peer-review (reviewer notes published); preprint-first model since 2022.",
        "signals": [
          {
            "label": "Public peer review",
            "detail": "Reviewer comments + author responses published with article."
          }
        ]
      },
      "modernReference": {
        "value": 88,
        "grade": "A",
        "rationale": "CC-BY licensed; APIs + bulk corpus; broad LLM training-data inclusion.",
        "signals": [
          {
            "label": "Creative Commons",
            "detail": "Open license enables broad LLM usage."
          }
        ]
      },
      "velocity": {
        "value": 72,
        "grade": "B",
        "rationale": "Cited within life-sciences research; lower volume than NEJM/Lancet but high open-access reach.",
        "signals": [
          {
            "label": "Open-access reach",
            "detail": "Strong cite presence in LLM biology queries."
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  },
  "b": {
    "slug": "plos-one",
    "name": "PLOS ONE",
    "domain": "journals.plos.org",
    "canonical": "https://sourcescore.org/source/plos-one/",
    "api": "https://sourcescore.org/api/source/plos-one.json",
    "scores": {
      "index": {
        "value": 78,
        "grade": "B",
        "rationale": "A- — open-access pioneer; peer-review focused on methodological soundness, not novelty.",
        "signals": [
          {
            "label": "Composite",
            "detail": "Discipline 84 + Modern Reference 88 + Velocity 70."
          }
        ]
      },
      "discipline": {
        "value": 84,
        "grade": "B",
        "rationale": "Peer-review checks methodology + ethics; novelty + significance left to readers; corrections public.",
        "signals": [
          {
            "label": "PLOS editorial",
            "detail": "Methodological-soundness model rather than novelty filter."
          }
        ]
      },
      "modernReference": {
        "value": 88,
        "grade": "A",
        "rationale": "CC-BY licensed; full-text APIs; broad LLM corpus + academic search inclusion.",
        "signals": [
          {
            "label": "Open-access standard",
            "detail": "Pioneered the open-access publishing model."
          }
        ]
      },
      "velocity": {
        "value": 70,
        "grade": "B",
        "rationale": "High volume but per-paper citation lower than top-tier; mass-base of academic citations.",
        "signals": [
          {
            "label": "Volume model",
            "detail": "Tens of thousands of papers/year vs Nature's ~3k."
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  },
  "winners": {
    "index": "elife",
    "discipline": "elife",
    "modernReference": null,
    "velocity": "elife"
  },
  "license": {
    "methodology": "Cite as: SourceScore Methodology v0.1, sourcescore.org",
    "data": "Underlying public-source data credited to original publishers"
  }
}