PLoS ONE Author Checklist for Manuscript Submission

Ready to submit your manuscript? Please refer to our submission checklist below and use our online manuscript submission system.

When you submit your paper to PLoS ONE, you will be asked to provide some information in addition to the manuscript file itself, as well as some associated files. This checklist will ensure that you have gathered all the relevant information and that the manuscript is formatted appropriately. Details can be found in our Guidelines for Authors.

Information Needed Prior to Submission

• Have you read the license agreement and are you able to sign it on behalf of all the authors?
• Do you have e-mail addresses for all the authors?
• Have you prepared a cover letter explaining the contribution your study will make to the scientific literature?
• Does your cover letter include suggestions for PLoS ONE Academic Editors who could consider your submission? (view full list of academic editors)
• Do you have PDF versions of all related manuscripts by any of the authors, submitted or in press elsewhere?
• Have you discussed the publication fees with your co-authors? Standard publication fees are US$1300 per manuscript and will be billed upon acceptance (read the FAQ on publication fees). We do offer a fee waiver for authors with insufficient funds, and the ability of authors to pay publication charges will never be a consideration in the decision whether to publish.
• Have you prepared a statement indicating who funded the study, and the role of the funding agency in conducting the study and in preparing the manuscript? You will be asked to enter this into the relevant section of the submission form.

Manuscript Requirements

• Have all authors and their affiliations been included?
• Do you have a list of the contributions that each author has made to the project?
• Do you know of any competing interests any of the authors may need to report?
• Does your paper conform to the Guidelines for Authors?
• Does your title contain fewer than 150 characters?
• Does your running title contain fewer than 30 characters?
• Is your summary no more than 300 words and divided into sections called Background, Methodology/Principal Findings, and Conclusions/Significance?
• Have you used standard nomenclature?
• Have your original figures been created as EPS or TIFF files in a high enough resolution to provide for adequate review?
• If your manuscript is ready for publication, do your figures conform to the Guidelines for Figure and Table Preparation? Has each multipanel figure been combined into a single file?
• Is the manuscript file created in Word, LaTeX, or RTF?
• Are tables included at the end of the manuscript file? Is the table title no more than one sentence and has all the rest of the table legend been placed below the table itself?
• Are all figures and tables called out in the manuscript in proper order?
• Have you used proper PLoS style for the references?
• Have you read through the manuscript carefully so that you are sure there are no typographical or grammatical errors?

Supporting Information Requirements

• Do you have datasets or raw data in a format that can be readily submitted as supporting information?
• Are any new or lesser-known protocols described in detail in a separate file that can be submitted as supporting information?
• Have all appropriate datasets, images, and information been deposited in the relevant public resources and have the accession (and version) numbers been provided in the paper?
• Have all genes, proteins, mutants, diseases, etc., used in the paper been identified by their accession number upon first use, if they appear in a public database?
• Is each supporting information file smaller than 10 MB in size?
• Are your supporting information files in a format that can be used best by your research community?
• Do all supporting information files have a title and legend?