Submit Now
Are you ready to submit your manuscript? Please review the submission guidelines, editorial and publishing policies, figure guidelines, and table guidelines, and then refer to this checklist to ensure that you have gathered all the relevant information and that the manuscript is formatted appropriately.
Submission Instructions
These are step-by-step instructions for submitting a manuscript to our online submission system.
Do not resubmit your manuscript if you have otherwise already submitted it to PLOS ONE. If you are submitting a revised manuscript, read the revision guidelines. If you are responding to a technical check inquiry, follow the instructions you receive by email from PLOS staff.
Begin
Go to Editorial Manager and log in.
Submit new manuscript
Click on the “Submit New Manuscript” link under the “New Submissions” heading. This will take you to a new screen.
Article type
Next, select your article type. Most submissions will be either a Research Article or a Clinical Trial.
Title
Enter the title and short title of your manuscript. Please do not enter your titles in all capital letters.
Contributors
Next you will be asked to enter the names, email addresses, and institutional affiliations for each author. Each author should have made real and concrete contributions to the manuscript; you will have the opportunity to describe each author’s contribution in a further step. Each author should also be aware of the submission and approve the manuscript submitted. PLOS does not condone or accept guest authorship.
Corresponding author
Additionally, you will be asked to designate one author to act as corresponding author. Note that this is the person who will receive correspondence from the PLOS ONE editorial office, but does not need to be the person who will appear as corresponding author on the paper if accepted.
The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that the author list and author contributions are accurate and complete. The person noted as the corresponding author should be the person who is actually responsible for ensuring that all the proper forms are submitted and accurate, and should be readily available for correspondence if PLOS ONE editors have questions or concerns.
The corresponding author must provide an ORCID iD at the time of submission by entering it in the user profile in the submission system. For more information about how to register for an ORCID iD and link it to Editorial Manager, watch this short video.
If a corresponding author will not be available for an extended period of time, please inform PLOS ONE at plosone@plos.org.
Category
Next, you’ll receive a prompt about your paper’s Section/Category. If your paper describes primary research on human subjects, indicate that here by selecting the category Clinical; if not, select Other.
Abstract
This should exactly match the text of the Abstract in your manuscript file.
Keywords
These will help expedite the internal processing of your manuscript. You will not have another opportunity to edit these, so please make sure to add concise, accurate keywords at this point.
Competing interests
Please declare any affiliations or relationships that could be viewed as potentially competing interests. This information will be published with the final manuscript, if accepted, so please make sure that this is accurate and as detailed as possible.
Financial disclosure
Please disclose your funders and the role they played in your manuscript. This information will be published with the final manuscript, if accepted, so please make sure that this is accurate and as detailed as possible.
Please include relevant grant numbers and the URL of any funder’s website. Please also state whether any individuals employed or contracted by the funders (other than the named authors) played any role in: study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. If so, please name the individual and describe their role. If no individuals employed or contracted by the funder(s), other than the authors, were involved in these tasks and the authors had unrestricted access to the data, please state, “The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”
Ethics statement
You must provide an ethics statement if your study made use of human or vertebrate animal subjects and/or tissue. The text in this field should exactly match the text of the ethics statement in the body of your paper; we recommend that you cut and paste your paper’s ethics statement into this field. The information submitted here will be evaluated by the PLOS ONE editors to ensure that it meets our standards, so please include as much information as possible. See the PLOS ONE Criteria for Publication for more information about ethics requirements.
Previous interactions
If you are submitting your manuscript following a recommendation from another PLOS journal, or if you have had a previous interaction with PLOS ONE about the manuscript or closely related manuscripts, please indicate the extent of your previous interaction here.
Suggest Academic Editors
Please recommend 2-5 Academic Editors from our board who you feel are qualified to handle your submission based on their areas of expertise.
Collections submission
Please indicate if you are submitting your paper as a part of a collection. Read more information about PLOS Collections.
New taxon
If your paper describes a new taxon, please give its name. Read the guidelines for describing a new taxon.
Dual publications
Please explain whether any of the elements of your paper have ever been published anywhere before. If so, we may have to consider copyright issues, so it is very important that you provide this information in full.
US Government employee
If you are an employee of the US Government, please indicate that here.
Author contributions
This is a series of questions that will enable you to state the contributions of each author. Each author listed on the manuscript should have made a real and concrete contribution to the submission, and each person who contributed to the manuscript should be listed. More information about authorship can be found in the Editorial Policies.
Required statements
Next you must enter your initials to indicate your agreement with four required statements regarding PLOS Editorial and Publishing Policies.
Direct billing to institutions and funders
If your institution has a direct billing relationship with PLOS, please indicate this here.
Publication fees
Select the country that provided the primary funding for the research in the submission.
Enter comments
You may enter comments for the editorial office here.
Oppose reviewers
If there are people you think should not be invited to review your paper, please provide their information here, as well as the reason for opposition. If there are any Academic Editors you think should not be invited to review your paper, please also provide their information here, making clear that they are an editor, not a reviewer. You must also provide an explanation for your opposition. The editorial team will respect these requests so long as this does not interfere with the objective and thorough assessment of the submission.
Attach files
Now you will upload your cover letter and each of the files to be included in your manuscript. For each file you upload to the system, you will select the file type from the “Item” drop down menu. Enter or amend the autofill description for each file in the Description box. When you are done uploading files, you will have an opportunity to review your file inventory before finalizing your submission.
Review file inventory
When you are satisfied, click “Next” at the bottom of this page. If you experience any issues with your figures, please use the PACE tool to assess them. Watch this short video for instructions about using PACE.
Create a PDF
In this step, the system will merge all of your files into a PDF for your approval. When you are ready, approve the PDF to finalize your submission.
Revised Manuscripts
Are you submitting a revision? Read the guidelines for revised manuscripts.
Help
Please contact plosone@plos.org if you have any questions.