{
  "apiVersion": "v0.1",
  "methodology": "https://sourcescore.org/methodology/",
  "canonical": "https://sourcescore.org/source/plos-one/",
  "source": {
    "slug": "plos-one",
    "name": "PLOS ONE",
    "domain": "journals.plos.org",
    "category": "Academic",
    "summary": "Open-access multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal published by Public Library of Science.",
    "founded": 2006,
    "verified": "2026-04-28",
    "methodologyVersion": "v0.1"
  },
  "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."
        }
      ]
    }
  },
  "license": {
    "methodology": "Cite as: SourceScore Methodology v0.1, sourcescore.org",
    "data": "Underlying public-source data credited to original publishers"
  }
}