About PLoS Pathogens

PLoS Pathogens (eISSN 1553-7374, ISSN 1553-7366) is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal published monthly by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), a nonprofit organization.

PLoS Pathogens is run by an international Editorial Board, headed by the Editor-in-Chief, Kasturi Haldar (University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA).

Scope

Bacteria, fungi, parasites, prions and viruses cause a plethora of diseases that have important medical, agricultural, and economic consequences. Moreover, the study of microbes continues to provide novel insights into such fundamental processes as the molecular basis of cellular and organismal function.

PLoS Pathogens reflects the full breadth of research in these areas by publishing outstanding original articles that significantly advance the understanding of pathogens and how they interact with their host organisms. Topics include (but are not limited to) adaptive and innate immune defenses as well as pathogen countermeasures, emerging pathogens, evolution, genomics and gene regulation, model host organisms, pathogen-cell biology, pathogenesis, prions, proteomics and signal transduction, rational vaccine design, structural biology, and virulence factors.

Please refer to our Author Guidelines when you are preparing your manuscripts for submission. If you are unsure whether your paper is suitable for PLoS Pathogens, you can send a Presubmission Inquiry.

Open Access

The Public Library of Science (PLoS) applies the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) to all works we publish. Under the CCAL, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their article, but authors allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy articles in PLoS journals, so long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers.

Publication Charges

To provide open access, PLoS journals use a business model in which our expenses—including those of peer review, journal production, and online hosting and archiving—are recovered in part by charging a publication fee to the authors or research sponsors for each article they publish. For PLoS Pathogens the publication fee is US$2200. Authors who are affiliated with one of our Institutional Members are eligible for a discount on this fee.

We offer a complete or partial fee waiver for authors who do not have funds to cover publication fees. Editors and reviewers have no access to payment information, and hence inability to pay will not influence the decision to publish a paper.

For further information, see our Publication Fee FAQ.

Measuring Impact

The impact factor is calculated in large part by how often a journal's papers have been cited in a particular year. The current impact factor for PLoS Pathogens is 9.3, which places it highest in the "Parasitology" category. Although the impact factor cannot fully measure the value of published work or its wider influence, we are delighted with the response from and support of the pathogens community and remain focused on our principal goal of publishing high-quality, substantive science. We also encourage contributors and readers to consider the wider issues surrounding the impact factor (see, for example, the June 2006 editorial in PLoS Medicine) and to participate in efforts to develop alternative metrics.

About the Public Library of Science

The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a non-profit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource. For more information about PLoS, visit www.plos.org.