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PLoS ONE Guidelines for Authors

  1. About PLoS ONE
  2. Criteria for Publication
  3. Overview of the Editorial Process
  4. Presubmission Inquiries
  5. Preparation of Research Manuscripts
  6. Discipline-Specific Requirements
  7. Overview of the Production Process
  8. Post-Publication Process

1. About PLoS ONE

Scientific progress requires the exchange and discussion of data and ideas. PLoS ONE is a unique publication dedicated to presenting the results of scientific research from any scientific discipline in an open-access environment. At the same time, it provides a forum in which to discuss that scientific research and so provide for each and every paper its maximum possible impact. To achieve this, PLoS ONE combines traditional peer review with 'Web 2.0' tools to facilitate community evaluation and discourse around the published article.

The peer review of each article is rigorous and concentrates on objective and technical concerns to determine whether the research has been sufficiently well conceived, well executed, and well described to justify inclusion in the scientific record. Then, after publication, all papers are opened up for interactive discussions and assessment in which the whole scientific community can be involved.

Unlike many journals which attempt to use the peer review process to determine whether or not an article reaches the level of 'importance' required by a given journal, PLoS ONE uses peer review to determine whether a paper is technically sound and worthy of inclusion in the published scientific record. Once the work is published in PLoS ONE, the broader community is then able to discuss and evaluate the significance of the article (through the number of citations it attracts; the downloads it achieves; the media and blog coverage it receives; and the post-publication Notes, Comments and Ratings that it receives on PLoS ONE etc).

To provide open access, PLoS journals use a business model in which our expenses—including those of peer review, journal production, and online hosting and archiving—are recovered in part by charging a publication fee to the authors or research sponsors for each article they publish. For PLoS ONE the publication fee is US$1350. Authors who are affiliated with one of our Institutional Members are eligible for a discount on this fee.

We offer a complete or partial fee waiver for authors who do not have funds to cover publication fees. Editors and reviewers have no access to payment information, and hence inability to pay will not influence the decision to publish a paper. These policies ensure that the fee is never a barrier to publication.

2. Criteria for Publication

To be accepted for publication in PLoS ONE, research articles must satisfy the following criteria:

  1. The study presents the results of primary scientific research.
  2. Results reported have not been published elsewhere.
  3. Experiments, statistics, and other analyses are performed to a high technical standard and are described in sufficient detail.
  4. Conclusions are presented in an appropriate fashion and are supported by the data.
  5. The article is presented in an intelligible fashion and is written in standard English.
  6. The research meets all applicable standards for the ethics of experimentation and research integrity.
  7. The article adheres to appropriate reporting guidelines (e.g. CONSORT, MIAME, STROBE, EQUATOR) and community standards for data availability.

The PLoS ONE board of Academic Editors, and any invited external peer reviewers, will evaluate submissions against these criteria.

To expand on each of these criteria:

1. Does the manuscript report on primary research?

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. Commissioned reviews, synthesis and commentary articles are considered but only where they form part of an agreed collection. The number, format and prospective authors of these articles are defined by the PLoS ONE staff and the collection organizers prior to their submission.

Systematic reviews are considered for publication in PLoS ONE but are limited to areas where appropriate standards for conduct and reporting apply and where the methods ensure the utmost rigor in the comprehensive and unbiased sampling of existing literature. A systematic review differs substantially from a narrative-based review or synthesis article and has its roots in the medical sciences (but is beginning to be applied to other disciplines such as environmental sciences). As defined by the Cochrane Centre, it is a review of a clearly formulated question that uses systematic and explicit methods to identify, select, and critically appraise relevant research, and to collect and analyze data from the studies that are included in the review. Statistical methods (meta-analysis) may or may not be used to analyze and summarize the results of the included studies. Please also see our reporting guidelines for such articles.

Individual case reports are not considered for publication in PLoS ONE. However, papers describing the results of studies involving only one individual (i.e., n-of-1 studies) can be considered for publication in PLoS ONE if evidence is provided that the paper describes the results of a preplanned research project, rather than a description of the clinical care received by an individual patient.

2. Have the results reported been published elsewhere?

PLoS ONE does not accept for publication work that has already been published elsewhere. However, studies that replicate results that are already in the literature may be considered for publication in PLoS ONE, as the independent confirmation of results can often be valuable, as can the presentation of a new dataset (for example, a new clinical trial).

3. Are the experiments, statistics, and other analyses performed to a high technical standard and are described in sufficient detail?

The research must have been performed to a technical standard high enough to allow robust conclusions to be drawn from the data. Methods and reagents must also be described in sufficient detail so that another researcher is able to reproduce the experiments described.

4. Are the conclusions presented in an appropriate fashion with speculations and hypotheses identified as such?

The results must be interpreted appropriately, such that all conclusions are justified. However, authors may discuss possible explanations for their results as long as these are clearly identified as speculations or hypotheses, rather than as firm conclusions. Inappropriate interpretation of results is a justifiable reason for rejection.

5. Is the article presented in an intelligible fashion and written in English?

PLoS ONE staff do not copyedit the text of accepted manuscripts; it is therefore important for the work, as presented, to be intelligible. Perfect, stylish English is not essential but the language must be clear and unambiguous. If the language of a paper is poor, Academic Editors should recommend that authors seek independent editorial help before submission of a revision. A list of scientific editing services can be found in the PLoS ONE Guide to Authors. Poor presentation and language is a justifiable reason for rejection.

6. Does the research meet all applicable standards with regard to the ethics of experimentation and research integrity?

Research published in PLoS ONE must have been conducted to the highest ethical standards. A brief description of the most common of these is described in our Editorial and Publishing Policies. Please contact PLoS ONE staff (plosone [at] plos.org) if you have queries as to whether these standards have been met.

7. Does the article adhere to appropriate reporting guidelines (e.g. CONSORT, MIAME, STROBE, EQUATOR) and community standards for data availability?

PLoS ONE aims to promote openness in research and intends that all work published in PLoS ONE can be built on by future researchers. We therefore demand conformity to standards for the public deposition of data (for example gene sequences, microarray expression data, and structural studies). Other similar standards that are applicable to specific communities should also be upheld. Failure to comply with community standards is a justifiable reason for rejection.

3. Overview of the Editorial Process

PLoS ONE provides all authors with an efficient and 'hassle-free' editorial process. Our aim is to identify those submissions that warrant inclusion in the scientific record and present them to the scientific community with as few hurdles as possible.

The editorial process is run by the journal's extensive board of Academic Editors (AEs), who work together to orchestrate the peer-review process. AEs are invited to handle submitted manuscripts on the basis of the content of the manuscript and their own expertise. The AE evaluates the paper and decides whether it describes a body of work that meets the editorial criteria of PLoS ONE. AEs can employ a variety of methods, alone or in combination, to reach a decision in which they are confident:

After appropriate consideration by the AE, a decision letter to the author is drafted. This letter may also be circulated to other members of the editorial board, who are given a short time to comment on the editorial decision.

There are several types of decisions possible:

Acceptance and Publication

Upon editorial acceptance, the manuscript is checked by PLoS ONE staff to ensure that it is in a form that will allow it to be efficiently handled by our production system (so called 'Check for Completeness'). The authors will be queried and allowed to make any final minor revisions that are needed.

This is the final stage at which an author will see their manuscript before publication. The authors' files will then be carefully tagged to generate final XML and PDF files, but will they not be subject to detailed copyediting (see Overview of the Production Process). It is therefore essential that authors provide a thoroughly proofread and checked manuscript, following the manuscript checklist and any comments from PLoS staff.

Appeals

If a paper is rejected and authors feel that they have grounds to appeal the decision, they may submit an appeal. Appeal requests should be made in writing, not by telephone, and should be addressed to plosone [at] plos.org with the word "appeal" in the subject line. Authors should provide detailed reasons for the appeal and point-by-point responses to the reviewers' and/or Academic Editor's comments. Decisions on appeals are final without exception. Authors should also be aware that priority is given to new submissions to the journal and so the processing of the appeal may well take longer than the processing of the original submission.

4. Presubmission Inquiries

PLoS ONE does not consider presubmission inquiries. Such inquiries essentially request that the editors of a journal assess whether the paper is of potential interest to that journal by virtue of its subject area, novelty, or anticipated impact. In general, such subjective opinion would have little bearing on whether a paper should be published in PLoS ONE. First of all, all subject areas are of interest to PLoS ONE, and furthermore, to judge whether a study has been sufficiently well performed and well documented to permit publication in PLoS ONE requires submission of the full paper.

5. Preparation of Research Manuscripts

PLoS ONE considers manuscripts of any length; we encourage the submission of both substantial full-length bodies of work and shorter manuscripts based on a more limited range of experiments. There are no explicit word, figure, or supporting information restrictions, although we encourage a concise and accessible writing style. Editors may make suggestions for how to achieve this, as well as suggestions for cuts or additions that could be made to the article to strengthen the arguments made. Authors are encouraged to use their own voice and to decide how best to present their ideas, results, and conclusions.

Although we encourage submissions from around the globe, we require that manuscripts be submitted in English. As a step toward overcoming language barriers, we encourage authors fluent in other languages to provide copies of their full articles or abstracts in other languages; these will be made available along with the published paper. Translations should be submitted as supporting information.

Cover Letter

It is important that you include a cover letter with your manuscript. Please explain why this manuscript is suitable for publication in PLoS ONE. How does your paper provide a worthwhile addition to the scientific literature? How does your paper relate to previously published work? Which types of scientists do you believe will be most interested in your study?

Please ensure that your cover letter also includes suggestions for PLoS ONE Academic Editors who would be suitable to consider your submission (view full list of academic editors). Please suggest as many Academic Editors as you like, but note that we cannot guarantee that they will be used.

Electronic Formats

Our publication system supports a limited range of formats for text and graphics. Text files can be submitted in only the following formats: Word, LaTeX, and RTF. Graphics files can only be submitted in the following formats: EPS or TIFF.

If you experience difficulties with the manuscript submission Web site or are concerned about the suitability of your files, please contact the journal (plosone [at] plos.org).

Prior Publication

When submitting their article, all authors are asked to indicate that they have not submitted a related or duplicate manuscript for publication elsewhere. If similar or related work has been submitted elsewhere, then a copy must be included with the article submitted to PLoS. Reviewers will be asked to comment on the overlap between related submissions.

Financial Disclosure

This section should describe sources of funding that have supported the work. Please include relevant grant numbers and the URL of any funder's Web site. Please also include this sentence: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." If this statement is not correct, you must describe the role of any sponsors or funders, and amend the aforementioned sentence as needed.

Author Status

The involvement of any professional medical writer in publication must be declared. We encourage authors to consult the European Medical Writers' Association Guidelines on the role of medical writers. For all PLoS journals, the corresponding author must submit the manuscript, related files, and all required data and information. From the point of submission through to publication, all communication related to that manuscript will be directed to and received from the corresponding author only.

PLoS ONE bases its criteria for authorship on those outlined in the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, which are summarized below. However, if you believe that a particular individual should be an author, you may include them, provided they are able to take responsibility for a given part of the study. The contributions of all authors must be described. Contributions that fall short of authorship should be mentioned in the acknowledgements.

"Authorship credit should be based on

  1. substantial contribution to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;
  2. drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
  3. final approval of the version to be published.

Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3.

When a large, multi-center group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript (3). These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship defined above and editors will ask these individuals to complete journal-specific author and competing interests disclosure forms. When submitting a group author manuscript, the corresponding author should clearly indicate the preferred citation and should clearly identify all individual authors as well as the group name.

Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, alone, does not justify authorship. All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content."

PLoS journals follow the COPE guidelines covering changes in authorship. Please note that if any changes to the list of authors of a manuscript are necessary after the initial submission of a manuscript to a PLoS journal but before its publication, the corresponding author must first contact the journal staff and provide a clear reason for the change(s). If the change to the authorship list is appropriate and in keeping with the guidelines above, the corresponding author will be asked to provide written confirmation that all other authors listed on the manuscript at that time consent to the change(s). Any individuals who the corresponding author requests to add or remove from the list of authors will be contacted.

Competing Interests

The submitting author is asked at submission to declare, on behalf of all authors, whether there are any financial, personal, or professional interests that could be construed to have influenced the paper. Reviewers are also asked to declare any interests that might interfere with their objective assessment of a manuscript. Any relevant competing interests of authors must be available to editors and reviewers during the review process and will be stated in published articles. Read more about the policy of PLoS regarding competing interests.

Abbreviations

Please keep abbreviations to a minimum and define them upon first use in the text. Non-standard abbreviations should not be used unless they appear at least three times in the text.

Figures

For the article to be accepted for publication, the author will need to supply high-resolution versions of the figures. When preparing your figures, please ensure that the files conform to our Guidelines for Figure and Table Preparation. Please do not upload panels for a single figure separately (for example, Figure 1A, Figure 1B-1D, Figure 1E); each figure file should be a single montage of all panels.

Please note that PLoS ONE can only accept figures submitted as either TIFF or EPS files.

All figures will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution License, which allows them to be freely used, distributed, and built upon as long as proper attribution is given. Please do not submit any figures that have been previously copyrighted unless you have express written permission from the copyright holder to publish under the CCAL license.

Microsoft Word Files

Microsoft Word article files should be submitted in DOC or RTF format. For technical reasons PLoS cannot accept Word 2007 DOCX files. If you created your manuscript using Word 2007, you must save the document as a Word 2003 file before submission.

Math Equations and Word 2007

If you are using Word 2007 and your manuscript will contain equations, you must follow the instructions below to make sure that your equations will be editable when you save the file as a Word 2003 document. PLoS cannot accept articles containing equations that are not editable in Word 2003.

You can ensure that your equations remain editable in Word 2003 by enabling "Compatibility Mode" before you begin. To do this:

  1. Open a new document.
  2. Save as "Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc)."

Several features of Word 2007 will now be inactive, including the built-in equation editing tool. You can now insert equations in one of two ways:

  1. Go to Insert > Object > Microsoft Equation 3.0 and create the equation.
  2. Use MathType to create the equation. MathType is the recommended method for creating equations.

If, when saving your final document, you see a message saying "Equations will be converted to images". This means that your equations are no longer editable and PLoS will be unable to accept your file.

NOTE: If you have already composed your article in Word 2007 and used its built-in equation editing tool, your equations will become images when the file is saved down to Word 97-2003. You will need to edit your document and insert the equations using one of the two ways specified above.

Organization of the Manuscript

Most articles published in PLoS ONE are organized in one of four fashions:

We advise that abstracts should not exceed 250–300 words. There are no specific length restrictions for the remaining sections of the manuscript; however, we urge authors to present and discuss their findings concisely.

You should include continuous line numbering throughout your manuscript.

Standard Microsoft Word templates are available to help authors prepare their manuscripts. The templates consist of a standard set of headings that make up research articles of various types, with guidance regarding what to include in each section.

Download templates:

If you would like to submit your manuscript using LaTeX, you must author your article using the PLoS ONE LaTeX template. Articles prepared in LaTeX may be submitted in PDF format for use during the review process. After acceptance, however, .tex files and formatting information will be required as a zipped file. Please consult our LaTeX guidelines for a list of what will be required.

Title (150 characters or fewer)

The title should be specific to the project, yet concise. It should be comprehensible to readers outside your field. Avoid specialist abbreviations, if possible. Titles should be presented in title case, meaning that all words except for prepositions, articles, and conjunctions should be capitalized. Where appropriate authors should ensure the title contains information about the species or model system in which a study has been done (for biological papers) or type of study design (for clinical papers).

Examples:
Impact of Cigarette Smoke Exposure on Innate Immunity: A Caenorhabditis elegans Model
Solar Drinking Water Disinfection (SODIS) to Reduce Childhood Diarrhoea in Rural Bolivia: A Cluster-Randomized, Controlled Trial

During the online submission process, you will also provide a brief "running head" of fewer than 30 characters.

Authors and Affiliations

Provide the first names or initials (if used), middle names or initials (if used), surnames, and affiliations—department, university or organization, city, state/province (if applicable), and country—for all authors. One of the authors should be designated as the corresponding author. It is the corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that the author list, and the summary of the author contributions to the study are accurate and complete. If the article has been submitted on behalf of a consortium, all author names and affiliations should be listed at the end of the article.

Abstract

The abstract succinctly introduces the paper. We advise that it should not exceed 250 - 300 words. It should mention the techniques used without going into methodological detail and should summarize the most important results. The abstract is conceptually divided into the following three sections: Background, Methodology/Principal Findings, and Conclusions/Significance. Please do not include any citations in the abstract. Avoid specialist abbreviations if possible.

Registration

Registration details should be included when reporting results of a clinical trial (see "Reporting Clinical Trials" for details). For each location that your trial is registered, please list: name of registry, registry number, and URL of your trial in the registry database.

Introduction

The introduction should put the focus of the manuscript into a broader context. As you compose the introduction, think of readers who are not experts in this field. Include a brief review of the key literature. If there are relevant controversies or disagreements in the field, they should be mentioned so that a non-expert reader can delve into these issues further. The introduction should conclude with a brief statement of the overall aim of the experiments and a comment about whether that aim was achieved.

Results

The results section should provide details of all of the experiments that are required to support the conclusions of the paper. There is no specific word limit for this section. The section may be divided into subsections, each with a concise subheading. Large datasets, including raw data, should be submitted as supporting information files; these are published online alongside the accepted article. We advise that the results section be written in past tense.

Discussion

The discussion should spell out the major conclusions of the work along with some explanation or speculation on the significance of these conclusions. How do the conclusions affect the existing assumptions and models in the field? How can future research build on these observations? What are the key experiments that must be done? The discussion should be concise and tightly argued. Conclusions firmly established by the presented data, hypotheses supported by the presented data, and speculations suggested by the presented data should be clearly identified as such. The results and discussion may be combined into one section, if desired.

Materials and Methods

This section should provide enough detail to allow full replication of the study by suitably skilled investigators. Protocols for new methods should be included, but well-established protocols may simply be referenced. We encourage authors to submit, as separate supporting information files, detailed protocols for newer or less well-established methods. These are published online only, but are linked to the article and are fully searchable.

Acknowledgments

People who contributed to the work but do not fit the criteria for authors should be listed in the Acknowledgments, along with their contributions. You must also ensure that anyone named in the Acknowledgments agrees to being so named.

Details of the funding sources that have supported the work should be confined to the funding statement provided in the online submission system. Do not include them in the acknowledgments.

References

Only published or accepted manuscripts should be included in the reference list. Meetings abstracts, conference talks, or papers that have been submitted but not yet accepted should not be cited. Limited citation of unpublished work should be included in the body of the text only. All personal communications should be supported by a letter from the relevant authors.

PLoS uses the numbered citation (citation-sequence) method. References are listed and numbered in the order that they appear in the text. In the text, citations should be indicated by the reference number in brackets. Multiple citations within a single set of brackets should be separated by commas. Where there are three or more sequential citations, they should be given as a range. Example: "... has been shown previously [1,4-6,22]." Make sure the parts of the manuscript are in the correct order before ordering the citations.

Because all references will be linked electronically as much as possible to the papers they cite, proper formatting of the references is crucial. Please use the following style for the reference list:

Published Papers
1. Sanger F, Nicklen S, Coulson AR (1977) DNA sequencing with chain-terminating inhibitors. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 74: 5463-5467.

Please list the first five authors and then add "et al." if there are additional authors. Use of a DOI number to the full-text article is acceptable as an alternative to or in addition to traditional volume and page numbers.

Accepted Papers
Same as above, but "in press" appears instead of the page numbers. Example: Adv Clin Path. In press.

Electronic Journal Articles 1. Loker WM (1996) "Campesinos" and the crisis of modernization in Latin America. Jour Pol Ecol 3. Available: http://www.library.arizona.edu/ej/jpe/volume_3/ascii-lokeriso.txt. Accessed 2006 Aug 11.

Books
1. Bates B (1992) Bargaining for life: A social history of tuberculosis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 435 p.

Book Chapters
1. Hansen B (1991) New York City epidemics and history for the public. In: Harden VA, Risse GB, editors. AIDS and the historian. Bethesda: National Institute of Health. pp. 21-28.

Figure Legends

The aim of the figure legend should be to describe the key messages of the figure, but the figure should also be discussed in the text. An enlarged version of the figure and its full legend will often be viewed in a separate window online, and it should be possible for a reader to understand the figure without switching back and forth between this window and the relevant parts of the text. Each legend should have a concise title of no more than 15 words. The legend itself should be succinct, while still explaining all symbols and abbreviations. Avoid lengthy descriptions of methods.

Tables

Tables should be included in the text file, at the very end of the manuscript. All tables should have a concise title. Footnotes can be used to explain abbreviations. Citations should be indicated using the same style as outlined above. Tables occupying more than one printed page should be avoided, if possible. Larger tables can be published as online supporting information. Please ensure that table formatting conforms to our Guidelines for Figure and Table Preparation.

Multimedia Files and Supporting Information

We encourage authors to submit essential supporting files and multimedia files along with their manuscripts. All supporting material will be subject to peer review.

Multimedia files should be smaller than 10 MB in size because of the difficulties that some users will experience in loading or downloading files. Preferred formats for PLoS ONE are:

Figures, tables, multimedia files, and datasets that make up the supporting information should be referred to in the manuscript with a leading capital S (e.g., Figure S4 for the fourth supporting information figure) and should fall into one of the following categories: Figure, Table, Text, Dataset, Audio, or Video. The numbered title and caption for each supporting information file should be entered into the appropriate fields in the online submission system. The information entered here will appear in the published version, so no supporting information titles or captions should be listed in the manuscript file.

6. Discipline-Specific Requirements

PLoS ONE fully supports the established standards of the fields that it covers. Some of these are detailed below:

Nomenclature

The use of standardized nomenclature in all fields of science and medicine is an essential step toward the integration and linking of scientific information reported in published literature. We will enforce the use of correct and established nomenclature wherever possible:

Accession Numbers

All appropriate datasets, images, and information should be deposited in public resources. Please provide the relevant accession numbers (and version numbers, if appropriate). Accession numbers should be provided in parentheses after the entity on first use. Suggested databases include, but are not limited to:

In addition, as much as possible, please provide accession numbers or identifiers for all entities such as genes, proteins, mutants, diseases, etc., for which there is an entry in a public database, for example:

Providing accession numbers allows linking to and from established databases and integrates your article with a broader collection of scientific information.

Ethical Treatment of Research Subjects and Patient Consent

All research involving humans and animals must have been approved by the authors' institutional review board or equivalent committee(s), and that board must be named by the authors in the manuscript. For research involving human participants, informed consent must have been obtained (or the reason for lack of consent explained, e.g. the data were analyzed anonymously) and all clinical investigation must have been conducted according to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Helsinki. It must be stated in the Methods section of the paper whether informed consent was written or oral. If informed consent was oral, it must be stated in the paper: (a) why written consent could not be obtained, (b) that the IRB approved the use of oral consent, and (c) how oral consent was documented.

Authors should be able to submit, upon request, a statement from the research ethics committee or institutional review board indicating approval of the research. We also encourage authors to submit a sample of a patient consent form, and may require submission on particular occasions.

For studies involving humans categorized by race/ethnicity, age, disease/disabilities, religion, sex/gender, sexual orientation, or other socially constructed groupings, authors should, as much as possible,

In addition, outmoded terms and potentially stigmatizing labels should be changed to more current, acceptable terminology. Examples: "Caucasian" should be changed to "white" or "of [Western] European descent" (as appropriate); "cancer victims" should be changed to "patients with cancer".

All animal work must have been conducted according to relevant national and international guidelines. In accordance with the recommendations of the Weatherall report, "The use of non-human primates in research" we specifically require authors to include details of animal welfare and steps taken to ameliorate suffering in all work involving non-human primates. The institution that approved the study must be named, and it must be stated in the paper that the study was conducted adhering to the institution's guidelines for animal husbandry.

Patient Privacy and Informed Consent for Publication

Our human participant policy conforms to the Uniform Requirements of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors:

"Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that the patient be shown the manuscript to be published.

Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, and informed consent for publication should be obtained if there is any doubt. If data are changed to protect anonymity, authors should provide assurance that alterations of the data do not distort scientific meaning.

When informed consent has been obtained it should be indicated in the published article."

For papers that include identifying information, or potentially identifying information, authors must download the Consent Form for Publication in a PLoS Journal from our site, which the patient, parent or guardian must sign once they have read the paper and been informed about the terms of the PLoS open-access license. (This license means that the images and text we publish online become available for any lawful purpose). Once authors have obtained the signed consent form, it should be filed securely in the patient's case notes and the article submitted to the PLoS journal should include this statement indicating that specific consent to publication was obtained. "The patients in this manuscript have given written informed consent (as outlined in the PLoS consent form) to publication of their case details."

Download "Consent Form for Publication":

Reporting Clinical Trials

We follow the WHO definition of a clinical trial. "A clinical trial is any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects on health outcomes. Interventions include but are not restricted to drugs, cells and other biological products, surgical procedures, radiologic procedures, devices, behavioural treatments, process-of-care changes, preventive care, etc"

PLoS supports the position of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) on trial registration. All trials initiated after 1 July 2005 must be registered prospectively in a publicly accessible registry (i.e., before patient recruitment has begun), or they will not be considered for publication. For trials initiated before 1 July 2005, all trials must be registered before submission to our journals. See the ICMJE faq on trial registration on trial registration for further details. The WHO's list of approved registries is listed here http://www.who.int/ictrp/network/primary/en/index.html.

Authors of trials must adhere to the CONSORT reporting guidelines appropriate to their trial design. Please check the CONSORT statement Web site for information on the appropriate guidelines for specific trial types. Before the paper can enter peer review authors must: 1) name in the paper trial registry, trial registration number, and IRB and 2) provide a copy of the trial protocol and a completed CONSORT checklist as supporting files (these documents will also be published alongside the paper, if accepted). The CONSORT flow diagram must be included as Figure 1. Any deviation from the trial protocol must be explained in the paper. Authors must explicitly discuss informed consent in their paper, and PLoS reserves the right to ask for a copy of the patient consent form. Information on statistical methods or participants beyond what is indicated in the CONSORT statement should be reported in the Methods section.

PLoS supports the public disclosure of all clinical trial results, as mandated for example by the FDA Amendments Act, 2007. Prior disclosure of results on a public Web site such as clinicaltrials.gov will not affect the decision to peer review or accept papers at PLoS journals.

Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses

Reports of systematic reviews and meta-analyses should use the PRISMA statement as a guide, and include a completed PRISMA checklist and flow diagram to accompany the main text. Blank templates of the checklist and flow diagram can be downloaded from the PRISMA Web site.

Reporting Diagnostic Studies

Reports of studies of diagnostic accuracy should conform to the STARD requirements.

Reporting Epidemiological Studies

For reports of epidemiological studies, you should consult the STROBE initiative.

Reporting Microarray Experiments

Reports of microarray experiments should conform to the MIAME guidelines, and the data from the experiments must be deposited in a publicly accessible database.

Reporting Software Articles

PLoS ONE supports the development of Open Source software and believes that for submissions in which software is the central part of the paper, then adherence to appropriate Open Source standards will ensure that the submission will conform to our requirements which state that "methods must be described in sufficient detail so that another researcher is able to reproduce the experiments described" as well as our "aim to promote openness in research and intention that all work published in PLoS ONE can be built on by future researchers." Therefore, if new software or a new algorithm is central to a paper, authors must confirm that the software conforms to the definition of Open Source as defined by the ten rules of the Open Source initiative and have deposited the following in an open software archive as well as included as supplemental information with the article:

  1. The associated source code of the software described by the paper: This should, as far as possible, follow accepted community standards and be licensed under a suitable license such as BSD, LGPL or MIT (see http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical for a full list). Dependency on commercial software such as Mathmatica and Matlab does not preclude a paper from consideration, although complete Open Source solutions are preferred.
  2. Documentation for running and installing the software: For end user applications instructions for installation and using the software are prerequisite; for software libraries instructions for using the API are prerequisite.
  3. A test dataset with associated control parameter settings: Where feasible, results from standard test sets should be included. Where possible test data should not have any dependencies; for example, a database dump.

Acceptable archives are: SourceForge, Bioinformatics.Org, Open Bioinformatics Foundation (O|B|F), Google Code, BerliOS Developer, Savannah, and the Codehaus. Authors should provide a direct link to the deposited software from within the paper.

Deposition with the journal as well as an Open Source archive ensures that the original source associated with the paper is available as well as any enhancements made after the paper is published. If the article covers a well established project that has been providing an open source code repository for an extended amount of time, it can also be considered.

A condition of acceptance is that the software can be run by reviewers accessing the public software and that results presented in the paper are reproducible. The software only need run on one hardware/software platform in common use by the readership (including Matlab), although it must run without dependencies on proprietary or otherwise unobtainable ancillary software. Articles describing software that requires access to databases and other resources whose persistence is not guaranteed (e.g., individual laboratory databases without funding support) will not be considered.

In addition, the results described in the paper must be reproducible when peer reviewers, editors, or readers run the software on the deposited dataset and with the provided control parameters.

In cases where the software/algorithm is not central to the paper, we nevertheless encourage authors to make all relevant materials freely available.

Information and guidelines for PLoS authors submitting a new taxon name (zoological nomenclature only)

When publishing papers which describe a new zoological taxon name, PLoS aims to comply with the requirements of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN). However, the ICZN does not yet recognise online-only journals and so unless PLoS adapts its publication process for taxonomic papers (which it does, as detailed below), any scientific animal name published by us would not be considered 'available' under the rules of the Code ('available' is the formal term for legally published under the Code, and is equivalent to the term 'nomenclaturally valid' in botanical literature). There is a proposal to amend the Code to accommodate electronic-only publication, which is currently under consideration and will be voted on in January 2010.

Until acceptance of this amendment, the ICZN has proposed an interim solution for authors publishing in PLoS Journals that allows us to comply with the code by providing a limited hardcopy print-run of the article and making it publicly obtainable. Therefore, for all papers that include the naming of a new zoological taxon, PLoS will make a printed version available for outside parties (at a cost of $10, to cover postage and printing) at the same time as the publication of the online-only article (which remains freely available). This additional printed version of the article will contain the text noted below in the footer of the first page. This text will be added by PLoS staff, and apart from this new footer, the printed version will be identical to the PDF of the online version:

Footer text: "This printed document was produced by a method that assures numerous identical and durable copies, and those copies were simultaneously obtainable for the purpose of providing a public and permanent scientific record, in accordance with Article 8.1 of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. Date of publication: XXXXXXXX. This document is otherwise identical to DOI: XXXXX

In addition, we ask that authors add the following information about archiving and ZooBank registration to the online version of the article before it is finally accepted, as follows:

  1. Digital Archiving. Please include the names of the digital archives where PLoS articles are deposited (currently, PubMedCentral and LOCKSS). If your institute (or those of your co-authors) has its own repository, we recommend that you also deposit the published online article there and also include the name of these repositories in your article.
  2. ZooBank Registration. We recommend that you get in touch now with a body called ZooBank about the registration of the new species name and request a unique digital identifier (an LSID). The LSID also needs to be included in the published paper. Richard Pyle, runs ZooBank and is an ICZN commissioner. Please note that ZooBank has not yet been officially recognized by the ICZN but it is still important to register there as the ICZN are likely to request mandatory registration of new names in ZooBank for all electronic-only journals.

The following paragraphs provide an example of the type of wording that we recommend for a new taxon description in a PLoS Journal. Please note that the first paragraph below is required for the online only version but is over-ruled by the footer note above, added to the print-only edition. Please add the names of the libraries and your institutional repositories, as appropriate.

Please insert the following text into the Methods section, in a sub-section to be called "Nomenclatural Acts":

The electronic version of this document does not represent a published work according to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), and hence the nomenclatural acts contained in the electronic version are not available under that Code from the electronic edition. Therefore, a separate edition of this document was produced by a method that assures numerous identical and durable copies, and those copies were simultaneously obtainable (from the publication date noted on the first page of this article) for the purpose of providing a public and permanent scientific record, in accordance with Article 8.1 of the Code. The separate print-only edition is available on request from PLoS by sending a request to PLoS ONE, 185 Berry Street, Suite 3100, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA along with a check for $10 (to cover printing and postage) payable to "Public Library of Science".

In addition, this published work and the nomenclatural acts it contains have been registered in ZooBank , the proposed online registration system for the ICZN. The ZooBank LSIDs (Life Science Identifiers) can be resolved and the associated information viewed through any standard web browser by appending the LSID to the prefix "http://zoobank.org/". The LSID for this publication is: (insert here)

In the results section, the LSID number should be listed under the new species name, for example:

Anochetus boltoni Fisher sp. nov.
urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:B6C072CF-1CA6-40C7-8396-534E91EF7FBB

7. Overview of the Production Process

Prior to submission, authors who believe their manuscripts would benefit from professional editing are encouraged to use language-editing and copyediting services, such as the ones described on the following Web sites. PLoS does not take responsibility for or endorse these services, and their use has no bearing on acceptance of a manuscript for publication.

Before formal acceptance, the manuscript will be checked by PLoS staff to ensure that it complies with all essential format requirements. The authors' files are then carefully tagged to generate XML and PDF files, but will not be subject to detailed copyediting. Obtaining this service is the responsibility of the author.

Scientific Editing Services (in alphabetical order):

Once an article has been accepted for publication, the manuscript files are transferred into our production system and will be published in PDF and HTML formats, with an XML download option. Articles will also be archived in PubMed Central.

8. Post-Publication Process

Once your article is published, readers of the article are able to annotate parts of the text (via 'notes'), comment on the overall content (via 'comments') or rate the article (via a 5 star rating system covering 'insight', 'reliability', 'style' and 'overall'). By using these feedback tools, the paper gathers 'post publication' commentary that improves the scientific debate around the content. More information is available in our Guidelines for Notes, Comments, and Corrections and we recommend that authors make their communities aware of these tools and encourage their use.

As part of this process, upon publication PLoS ONE routinely posts the referees' reports as comments accompanying the online version of papers. When submitting their reviews, the referees are asked for permission for their comments to be posted. Referees are encouraged to sign these reports but may maintain their anonymity if they wish. By posting the referees comments, with their permission, PLoS ONE hopes to make the review process more transparent as well as stimulating informed debate of the published papers.

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