A redesign for the PLOS Journals – coming soon
On the eve of our tenth anniversary, we’re pleased to announce that a redesign of all PLOS journals is around the corner. The three goals of this initiative were to:
- Ensure that readers can quickly assess the relevance and importance of an article through a figure browser and highly visible Article-Level Metrics
- Improve site navigation to help users discover content more easily
- Launch a flexible platform from which to build out future innovations
Here’s a sneak preview of our new journal home pages so that you know a little more about what to expect.
Many of you will have noticed some ongoing enhancements to the journals this year, for example figures and Article-Level Metrics (ALM). You can expect similar developments to continue to roll out starting in early 2013 and into the future as we continue to adapt to meet user needs.
After extensive research into how researchers find and use content, we’ve focused our attention on refining and improving our article layout and functionality so that we can help you to locate relevant articles more quickly and enrich your reading experience. Here’s a brief rundown of the new user features:
- More prominent figures – featured throughout articles and search so that you can quickly determine if an article is relevant to you
- Enhanced Discovery – Search now reflects our new expanded taxonomy of subject categories
- Metrics Signposts – sub-sets of ALM data, provide at-a-glance measures of article reach and impact
- Custom Saved Search – log in, enter your keywords and save, then receive new content that precisely meets your interests via email
- Author data – clear presentation of affiliations/attribution for each author as well as grouped by institution
- Abstract and Figure viewer – providing new ways for you to get around and find what matters
- Faster navigation – persistent (so you never get lost) and floating (follows you down the page)
- Clearer Tabs – easier to see and use, providing enriched article information
PLOS is taking advantage of the most powerful web technologies to improve our reader experience, promote Open Access and encourage conversation around the latest research to accelerate progress in science and medicine and lead a transformation in research communication. We look forward to introducing our redesign shortly.