Verifying against the live site and live WHOIS/DNS…
Common questions
Is plos.org legit or a scam?
AboutUs doesn't label sites "legit" or "a scam": this page lists the dated registration, DNS, HTTPS, mail-authentication and safety checks we could verify, each with its source, so you can decide for yourself.
Who owns plos.org?
Nobody has completed AboutUs's owner verification for plos.org. That's true of most sites here — it isn't itself a warning sign.
Correct a description, link or other detail. Submissions are reviewed before publication.
3 of 4 safety checks passed (Oct 11, 2026).
Registered 2000 · site is live · HTTPS valid
Leading the future of open science publishing - PLOS
PLOS is a nonprofit open-access publisher of peer-reviewed scientific journals covering life, health, sustainability, engineering, and technology. It serves researchers, institutions, librarians, and funders with a mission to make research openly accessible and reusable across disciplines. The organization operates multiple journals including PLOS Biology, PLOS Medicine, and PLOS One, and actively shapes open science policy and practice.
Add the HSTS, Content-Security-Policy, and X-Frame-Options response headers.
AboutUs has not vetted this site. Everything below is what we could measure automatically. Anything you do on the site — paying, sharing personal details, downloading — is between you and the site, not AboutUs.
Current facts
Latest available measurements; dated entries retain their dates. These are measurements, not an endorsement of the site.
latest result
Domain registered Oct 2, 2000 — 26 years old.
latest result
Registrar on record: Cloudflare, Inc. — unchanged since AboutUs began tracking (Sep 6, 2026).
Authority 85/100— ahead of 85% of the August 2026 scored sampleClear
Why this authority score
85 is a percentile: higher than 85% of sites we score.
How it's calculated
Prominence (Tranco rank #1,172)+9
Verified continuity: 26.0 years (RDAP registration)+11
Security & email hygiene+4
Calibration adjustment (published map)+19
Model score: 43/99 — what these reason lines add up to.
Published Authority (percentile): 85/100 — this site's rank against the August 2026 scored sample. Public Authority is capped at 99.
Safety evidence
No unexpired threat-feed result; name-similarity check available (recorded about 11 days ago); 3/3 transport and email checks available (oldest recorded about 11 days ago). This is evidence coverage, not a probability that a website is safe.
Site history
Dated record — historical facts always carry their date.