So why is it so hard to find the pub date in the HTML view of PLoS papers? The date needs immediately visible to be somewhere in this space:
BTW, this is not my paper – it’s by the other, much more productive Michael A. White in whose shadow I’ve lived for years. I’ve never met him, but I have received his mail at one point.
The Finch and Pea 
The answer is you can find the date among the fine print after a few scrolls past the abstract, and past the author summary. It needs to be somewhere near the title.