Is PLOS ONE Indexed in PubMed? Yes, With Active MEDLINE Indexing
PLOS ONE is indexed in PubMed and currently indexed for MEDLINE, with coverage from volume 1, issue 1 in 2006 and PMC visibility also listed.
Associate Professor, Clinical Medicine & Public Health
Author context
Specializes in clinical and epidemiological research publishing, with direct experience preparing manuscripts for NEJM, JAMA, BMJ, and The Lancet.
Next step
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Use the guide or checklist that matches this page's intent before you ask for a manuscript-level diagnostic.
Quick answer: yes. PLOS ONE is indexed in PubMed, and the NLM Catalog shows that it is currently indexed for MEDLINE.
Direct answer
If you publish in PLOS ONE, the article is discoverable in PubMed and the journal sits inside the active MEDLINE system.
The NLM record shows:
- publication start year: 2006
- PubMed coverage from volume 1, issue 1 (2006)
- MEDLINE coverage from volume 1, issue 1 (2006)
- MEDLINE status: Currently indexed for MEDLINE
- PubMed Central coverage is also listed
That is a clean indexing record for a large open-access journal.
Why this matters for PLOS ONE
Authors often ask this question for PLOS ONE for a different reason than they ask it for prestige flagships. The concern is usually not whether the journal is famous. It is whether the journal is legitimate, discoverable, and fully integrated into the biomedical literature system.
The indexing answer is yes. Whatever you think about the soundness-based editorial model, the journal is visible in PubMed, active in MEDLINE, and present in PMC.
PubMed versus MEDLINE versus PMC
For this journal, all three matter:
- PubMed means the article is discoverable in the main biomedical search interface.
- MEDLINE means the journal remains inside the curated NLM journal index.
- PubMed Central matters because PLOS ONE is open access and full-text visibility is part of how papers circulate.
That combination is why PLOS ONE can be both high-volume and still easy to discover.
What indexing does and does not tell you
This page answers the discoverability question. It does not answer whether PLOS ONE is the right submission strategy for your paper.
Indexing tells you the published paper will be visible. It does not tell you whether a soundness-based journal is the right editorial model, prestige level, or selectivity tradeoff for your goals.
That is why the better next reads are:
- Is PLOS ONE a good journal?
- PLOS ONE submission guide
- PLOS ONE submission process
- PLOS ONE acceptance rate
Practical verdict
Yes, PLOS ONE is indexed in PubMed and currently indexed for MEDLINE, with PMC coverage also listed.
If your question is whether a published paper will be visible in the biomedical search workflow, the answer is yes. If your real question is whether the journal's soundness-based model is the right one for your manuscript, that is the harder strategy call. A free Manusights scan is useful if you want that judgment before submission.
Sources
- 1. PLOS ONE NLM Catalog record, NLM.
- 2. NLM Catalog help: current indexing status, NLM.
- 3. PLOS ONE journal page, PLOS.
- 4. PLOS ONE submission guidelines, PLOS.
Reference library
Use the core publishing datasets alongside this guide
This article answers one part of the publishing decision. The reference library covers the recurring questions that usually come next: how selective journals are, how long review takes, and what the submission requirements look like across journals.
Dataset / reference guide
Peer Review Timelines by Journal
Reference-grade journal timeline data that authors, labs, and writing centers can cite when discussing realistic review timing.
Dataset / benchmark
Biomedical Journal Acceptance Rates
A field-organized acceptance-rate guide that works as a neutral benchmark when authors are deciding how selective to target.
Reference table
Journal Submission Specs
A high-utility submission table covering word limits, figure caps, reference limits, and formatting expectations.
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