We’re excited to announce a new group at PLOS called PLOS Labs, which we created to develop disruptive ideas and products for science communication. We will be putting software prototypes in front of researchers to gather feedback on both the concepts and implementation, and coordinating open-source development projects to implement many of these ideas. We would love to have you join this effort – please sign up to participate.

With your support, non-profit PLOS has grown into a successful publisher, and open access is in the ascendancy. But PLOS has always been about more than open access – it’s about making science communication faster and better. And there are a lot of things that could be faster and better in the way journals – including PLOS – work today.

PLOS Labs is here to change this. It exists to take disruptive ideas and turn them in to tangible products, and is eager to work with our community of authors, editors and reviewers to make sure we do this right. PLOS Labs is also interested in forming partnerships with inventive individuals, organizations and publishers, large and small.

Sign up to opt-in to our evaluation pool. For each project, we will select individuals and email you instructions on how you can help. Testing will generally involve using product prototypes and then answering some questions. Some users we’ll be calling by phone or video chat, or inviting into our SF offices for deeper discussions (if you opt in for that level of participation). Each online experiment will take no more than 30 minutes of your time, some as few as 5 minutes, and we’ll ask for volunteers who can give more time responding to us by phone and video chat.

PLOS Labs is led by Jonathan Dugan, who has worked extensively with technology start-ups, remains active in the vibrant Bay Area venture community, and teaches entrepreneurship. We’re looking forward to doing what we do best: working with scientists to innovate and make research work better so that together we can continue to fulfill the PLOS mission of leading a transformation in research communication.