Welcoming two new journals to the PLOS portfolio: PLOS Mental Health and PLOS Complex Systems

Today we’re excited to announce PLOS will soon be launching two new journals: PLOS Mental Health and PLOS Complex Systems. We’re delighted to share this news with you today, so you can learn more about both journals and how you can get involved.

Introducing the new journals

PLOS Mental Health provides a dedicated venue for all mental health research, connecting global experts from a broad range of disciplines and addressing challenges and gaps in the field of mental health research, treatment, and care in ways that put the lived experience of individuals first. This is an inclusive, peer-reviewed journal ensuring all ethical and rigorous research is shared openly in order to drive meaningful progress toward improved health and well-being around the world. 

We’re excited to welcome Charlene Sunkel and Rochelle Burgess as our Editors-in-Chief of PLOS Mental Health!

“I am excited to join PLOS as [a publisher that] recognizes the value of people with lived experience of mental health conditions as key partners in producing research that are relevant and impactful. PLOS Mental Health will bring research not only to the scientific community, but to the broader stakeholder community who are able to utilize evidence in efforts to promote and protect mental health and the well-being of all people.”

Charlene Sunkel
Editor-in-Chief, PLOS Mental Health

This journal is launching at a time when we are witnessing a huge disruption in the status quo. Most importantly, a challenge to whose voices and whose knowledge counts in mental health, and the sciences more broadly. With the launch of PLOS Mental Health, we have an opportunity to chart a new course for the ways in which mainstream and critical mental health perspectives are in dialogue with each other, which will have such positive implications for mental health policy and practice globally. It is an absolute dream to be a part of this from day one.

Rochelle Burgess
Editor-in-Chief, PLOS Mental Health

PLOS Complex Systems will bring together impactful research that facilitates understanding of complex systems at the heart of the world we live in. This will be a truly transdisciplinary journal, welcoming research from any field that examines phenomena through a lens of complex relationships and models that track, measure, and predict outcomes. By bringing this research together and working with the research community to shape Open Science practices, we hope to empower researchers to share their work in ways that inspire ideas and accelerate progress while cross-fertilizing knowledge that enable solutions to fundamental challenges facing our society today.

Please also join us in welcoming Hocine Cherifi as our first Editor-in-Chief of PLOS Complex Systems! 

“I am thrilled to be part of the launch of PLOS Complex Systems, a significant step forward in understanding the intricacies of our world. This journal has the power to break down disciplinary boundaries and encourage researchers to approach problems holistically…I am excited to be on this journey as we uncover profound insights and drive innovation across multiple fields. Together, we have the opportunity to shape the future of complex systems research and make a lasting impact on scientific understanding and societal progress.“

Hocine Cherifi
Editor-in-Chief, PLOS Complex Systems

We are actively recruiting a Co-Editor-in-Chief for Complex Systems. Stay tuned for announcements from the journal!

Extending our mission to new communities

We see new journals as an opportunity to give evolving research communities opportunities to forge a new path for research in the field. Whether that means welcoming new ways of sharing research transparently, or cementing new policies that enable research to be evaluated and rewarded more fairly, or simply finding a broader audience where research can make a greater real-world impact.

I’m really excited to deepen our work with the research communities and stakeholders who will be a part of these journals. We have worked intentionally with these communities of researchers who have shared a need for venues that do more than help researchers share their work. Our journals will provide a space for experts of different disciplines to come together, to spark important discussions, and to explore and shape Open Science practices that will drive the field forward.

Rebecca Kirk
Publisher, Portfolio Development

Our new journals will encourage open-sharing behaviors that support rigor, reproducibility, and rapid dissemination of research. And we’ll hold ourselves accountable for that progress. As with all PLOS journals, we’ll offer opportunities for authors to share preprints, improve access to data and transparency of methodologies, and choose to publish their peer reviews. Open Science Indicators will allow us to establish benchmarks for open-sharing behaviors in these fields for the first time, and to track changes over time to test whether our solutions are working.

We also very much want researchers to be active partners in shaping how we do this in responsible and inclusive ways that fit the needs of the community. We look forward to engaging with these stakeholders more deeply and working with them in evolving the new titles, as we have across our portfolio.

Enabling equitable opportunities to participate

A key element of expanding openness for PLOS is in bringing diverse voices together. Inclusivity and equity are core to a strong foundation of Open Science, and we need to hear from all perspectives in order to make science, the process of publishing science, and the solutions science inspires, more robust. PLOS Mental Health and PLOS Complex Systems will strive to represent research from local experts around the world, and from across various disciplines.

We’re also exploring which of our APC-alternative models best serve the researchers who will publish in PLOS Mental Health or PLOS Complex Systems. We guarantee each journal will provide a mechanism for institutional support that enables more authors to publish Open Access, regardless of personal funding resources. 

How you can get involved

As we build these journals, we’ll be getting to know our new Editors-in-Chief, recruiting Editorial Board members from a diverse range of disciplines, and learning more about how we can best meet the needs of researchers in these communities. 

If you’re interested in learning more about the journals, applying to join the Editorial Board, or signing up for news and updates you can learn more by visiting our websites for PLOS Mental Health or PLOS Complex Systems.