PLoS ONE Author Checklist for Manuscript Submission

Ready to submit your manuscript? Please carefully read our submission checklist below and once you have done so, then submit using our online manuscript submission system.

Once you have submitted your paper to PLoS ONE using our submission software, your manuscript will undergo a rigorous 'Technical Check' before then entering the Peer Review process.

The checklist below addresses some of the most common reasons why manuscripts might fail this 'Technical Check'. If you follow this checklist while using our Submission software then you will minimize the chances that your manuscript will be returned to you, and you will be helping to speed your manuscript into the review process.

You should not assume that your manuscript has been formally submitted until you have received a notification that it has passed the 'Technical Check' phase.

If you have any problems, then we encourage you to consult our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page which will often provide you with an answer faster than emailing us.

Before Starting

• First, you should ensure that your submission conforms to our various Editorial Policies and meets our Editorial Criteria.
• Secondly, you should study our Guidelines for Authors as well as our Guidelines for Figure and Table Preparation.
• If you have difficulties, please be sure to check our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page for detailed answers to common submission questions.
• We have produced a number of brief (2 minute) video tutorials, explaining how to resolve some of the most common problems that authors encounter when submitting their manuscripts. These include: How to Submit Your Revised Manuscript, How to Check Your Manuscript Image Quality in Editorial Manager, How to Select a Coauthor to act as a Corresponding Author, How to Add Classifications to Your Manuscript and How to Attend to the "Author Data Missing" Error.

Cover Letter

• You should supply a cover letter explaining the contribution your study will make to the scientific literature.
• If you have had prior interactions with PLoS regarding this paper, your cover letter should mention this.
• Your cover letter should be addressed to PLoS ONE (i.e. there is no need to address an individual).
• You should NOT include any request for a publication charge reduction in this letter (this information should only be included on the submission form).

Article Types

• Be aware that PLoS ONE is designed specifically as a medium for primary, scientific research. As such, it is NOT suitable for the publication of reviews, mini-reviews, opinion pieces, hypothesis papers, commentaries, essays or other items of secondary literature.
• If your manuscript is a Clinical Trial then you must indicate this in the Article Type question (the first question upon submission). For Clinical Trials, your Trial Protocol and CONSORT documents must be uploaded as supporting information and the Trial Registration number must be stated on the title page.
• If your article is a Systematic Review or a Meta Analysis then select 'Research Article' but identify your article type in your cover letter. In addition, where applicable your Prisma flowchart must be uploaded as Figure 1, and the Prisma checklist must be uploaded as Supporting Information.

Authorship

• All authors, their affiliations and their email addresses must be the same in both the manuscript file and the online submission system.
• You will be asked to supply information relating to the contribution that is made by every one of the authors.
• You will be asked to declare any competing interests that any of the authors may have.

Title/Abstract

• The Title in your manuscript file must be identical to the title on the online submission form and be less than 150 characters.
• The Abstract in the manuscript must be identical to the abstract on the online submission form and be less than 300 words.

Manuscript File

• Consult this section of our Guidelines for detailed information about manuscript files.
• All figures and tables must be called out in the manuscript in their proper order.
• You must use the PLoS style for the references.
• Your manuscript must be written in intelligible English, and be free of typographical or grammatical errors. Therefore we suggest that you have a native English speaker read your manuscript before submission.

Classifications

• We require that you supply Classifications for your Manuscript, using our hierarchical taxonomy (of approximately 5,000 terms). This information is used to a) find suitable Academic Editors to handle your paper and b) navigate our web site once your paper is published. Therefore, it is VERY important that you provide sufficient, accurate classifications for your manuscript otherwise you may experience delays in the processing of your submission, or a lack of 'discoverability' once it is published.
• You should supply a minimum of ten classifications (when you select a 'lower level' term, it will automatically select the terms 'above' this one in the hierarchy, and so this will count as more than one classification against the ten).
• You should ensure that you have at three (and preferably more) Third Level classifications (eg. 30.10.20).
• Please consult this 3 minute video, which explains how to enter your classifications.

The 'Additional Information' Section of our Submission Form

This part of our submission form contains a number of very important questions which often cause problems in the Technical Check process. Therefore, please give careful attention to the items below.

All acronyms and abbreviations must be spelled out.

• Ethics Statement for a Clinical Paper (i.e. any human participation / tissue / sample / blood etc).
• You must name the Institutional Review Board or local ethics committee(s) that gave approval for the study. "Local ethics committee" is not acceptable.
• Provide a statement that written informed consent was received from all participants. In the case of minors, this consent must have been provided by parents/guardians. If written consent was not obtained, state the consent received and whether the ethics committee specifically approved this form of consent and how the consent was documented. If no consent was required, please confirm that the requirement for consent was specifically waived by the IRB/ethics committee.
• There must be a statement of written informed consent to publish if your paper includes potentially identifying information (E.g. clinical history, video or photographs of specific patients etc.)
• Your Ethics Statement must be identical on both the Methods section of the manuscript and the online submission form.

• Ethics Statement for an 'Animal' paper (any vertebrate including fish, mice, rats).
• Name the Animal Care and Use Committee or local animal ethics committee(s) that gave approval for the study. "Local ethics committee" is not acceptable.
• The permit or approval number must be included. If your country/institution regulations do not require such numbers, please specify the regulation.
• Your Ethics Statement must be identical on both the Methods section of the manuscript and the online submission form.

• Observational and field studies (for plant and animal field sampling).
• Provide a statement which includes the full details of animal husbandry, experimentation and care/welfare including permit numbers for your observational and field studies, or relevant permissions/permits from the field site (e.g. farm, national park) for your observational and field studies.

• Observational and field studies (for collection of leaves, feathers, soil, water, etc.).
• Provide a statement which includes the full details of relevant permissions/permits from the field site (e.g. private land, national park, public land) for your observational and field studies or a statement that no permits were required, including reasons why no permit is required (including any references to relevant regulations, if any exist).

• Competing Interests Statement
• In accordance with our requirements, all potential competing interests must be declared. These include, but are not limited to, employment, consultancy, patents (including details and application numbers), products in development or modified products etc.
• You must also include the statement "This does not alter our adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials" (assuming that is the case).

• Financial Disclosure
• All funding received for this work must be been stated in full.
• If no external funding was received, you must state "No external funding was received for this study."
• Acronyms must not be used (or they must be expanded in parenthesis).
• Grant numbers must be provided where possible.
• The Funders' role must be clearly stated.
• Include this sentence: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript" (assuming that is the case). If this statement is not correct, you must describe the role of any sponsors or funders and amend the aforementioned sentence as needed.
• If an author is employed by a commercial funder then we would normally expect a role to have been played by that Funder, and for that role to be detailed (but please be aware that if that is the case, this involvement does not necessarily invalidate your submission).

• Dual Publication
• If any of the results/data/figures in this manuscript have been published or are under consideration elsewhere, then the relevant data must be identified and you must explain why this does not constitute dual publication.
• Note that any previously published figures must be supplied with the permission to reuse them in an open access journal, under the Creative Commons Attribution License that PLoS uses.

• Publication Charges
• Any reduction in fees requested must be accompanied by a brief explanation in the Publication Fee Waiver box.
• If an institutional membership discounts has been requested, the corresponding author must be affiliated with this institute.

Some Discipline Specific Requirements

Note—this is not an exhaustive list, but merely details some of the most common problems we encounter with new submissions. Further information can be found in our Guidelines.

All acronyms and abbreviations must be spelled out.

• For New Microarray Data you must insert a statement in your Methods section confirming:
• Compliance to MIAME guidelines.
• That the data has been deposited in a publicly available database such as GEO or ArrayExpress.
• Your Accession numbers (please state if these will be provided during review).

• For DNA Sequencing (producing new data), you must insert a statement in your Methods section confirming:
• The deposition of your data to a publicly available database such as GenBank.
• Your Accession numbers (please state if these will be provided during review).

• For Existing Cell Lines you must insert references in the Methods section for one of the following (for each cell line):
• A reference to a published paper.
• The commercial Source.

• For De Novo Cell Lines, you must include full Ethics details as listed above under the "Ethics Statement".

• For Software Articles, you must deposit the following items in an open software archive: the associated source code of the software, documentation for running and installing the software, and a test dataset with associated control parameter settings.

Supporting Information Files

• Each supporting information file must be smaller than 10 MB in size.
• Your supporting information files should be in formats commonly used by your research community.
• All supporting information files must have a title and legend.
• If you wish to upload a compressed file and not have it 'unpacked' by our submission software, then you should compress it as 'rar' format (not 'zip' format).

If you have difficulties with your submission, then before emailing us please check our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page or our series of Video Shorts for detailed answers to common questions.