Two years of PLOS Mental Health

On 1st November 2023, PLOS Mental Health opened for submissions. About 8 months later we started to publish content and have consistently kept our mission and authors at the forefront of everything we do as a journal. We will continue to develop in accordance with the needs and interests of the communities that we aim to serve and would like to take this opportunity to share a summary of our first two years.

Our Content

At the two year mark and after 17 months of publishing, we have shared 364 papers from 48 countries (according to corresponding author). These have received a total of 315 citations. The published content includes 311 Research Articles and our authors have shared a total of 801 datasets! That is a win for Open Science and Research! Our most highly cited paper has been cited 26 times in the space of just 8 months. As a journal, we care about this because it is one potential read-out of how far our authors’ work may have reached. There will be many other ways to evaluate this – all of which are highly valuable and needed to fully understand the reach of content. Here, we are referring to citations as one measure in this context but we know the picture is incomplete.

In the last two years we have also shared:

• 10 ‘Journeys in Mental Health‘ (anonymous blog series, sharing lived experiences).
• 9 ‘Community Case Studies‘ (digging deeper into community-specific needs and author stories).
• 11 ‘Getting to know PLOS Mental Health‘ (sharing the expertise and interests of our amazing Section Editors).
• 3 ‘Bigger Picture‘ Seminars (highlighting work in our journal that has been led by ECRs or authors from under-represented communities, or aims to serve such communities).
• 5 Author and reviewer tailored resources (guidance for authors and reviewers who may not have a lot of experience with peer review).
• 10 campaigns for mental health awareness events (articles, blogs and seminars in honor of mental health events).

To help shape our priorities we have also set up 2 focus groups consisting of:

• People with lived experience of a mental health condition.
• Academic Editors from all regions (to expand and update our understanding of regional variations in mental health research – details to follow!).

It is so important to us that for both of our focus groups, we not only listen and deliver accordingly, but attribute the changes made at the journal to these specific groups. Without them, a lot of what we have done over the last few months would not have taken place. We are incredibly grateful to the generosity of all of our focus group members.

Final Thoughts…

The above provides a small snapshot of our output but to truly represent all of the work and dedication that goes on behind the scenes would be a whole series of blogs.

We would like to express deep gratitude to our editors, authors, reviewers, readers, focus group members, and community for being part of our journey so far.

We would also like to express how much we value the trust that the community has in this journal. This will never be taken for granted.