Editorial and Peer Review Process

The journal staff and in-house editorial team perform an initial quality check to identify potential issues such as:

• Competing interests
• Compliance with editorial policies and ethical standards
• Financial disclosures
• Data availability

Submissions may be returned to authors for changes or clarifications at this stage.

After completing internal checks, each new submission is assigned to an Academic Editor with relevant expertise. The editor reviews the manuscript against our publication criteria and determines whether reviews from additional experts are needed to evaluate the manuscript. The handling Academic Editor is usually a member of the PLOS ONE Editorial Board, but occasionally a Guest Editor is invited to serve instead.

During the submission process you’ll be asked to indicate any specific editors or reviewers who should not review your manuscript. We will respect your request so long as it does not interfere with the objective and thorough assessment of the submission.

The handling editor selects reviewers based on expertise, publication history, and past reviews, and invites them to provide feedback on the manuscript. After agreeing to review, external peer reviewers typically have 10 days to submit their review. The journal office will follow up with late reviewers and keep you informed if there are any delays.

PLOS ONE uses single-anonymized peer review. Reviewers remain anonymous unless they choose to identify themselves by signing their name to their review in our submission system.

The handling Academic Editor or staff editor makes the final decision on each manuscript. The time to render a first decision averages about 43 days, but times vary depending on how long it takes for the editor to receive and assess reviews.

The editor considers reviewer feedback and their own evaluation of the manuscript in order to reach a decision. The following decision types are available:

• Reject
• Major revision
• Minor revision
• Accept

Decisions are communicated to the corresponding author in a formal letter, along with reviewer feedback and any other requirements from the journal office.

If the editor feels that your manuscript has the potential to be published, but requires changes, you’ll be invited to revise it. You’ll have 45 days to resubmit the revised manuscript for both a major or a minor revision.

In most cases, the revised manuscript is re-assigned to the original Academic Editor. The editor may make a new decision based on their own assessment of the revised manuscript and your response to reviewers, or request additional input from external peer reviewers.

Read more about revising your manuscript.

PLOS ONE uses two levels of accept decision. When the handling editor is satisfied with the scientific aspects of the manuscript they’ll issue an editorial accept decision. This is a provisional acceptance, pending final checks for formatting and technical requirements. Once the final requirements are fulfilled, the journal office will send a formal accept decision, and your manuscript will move on to production.

Read more about accepted manuscripts.

PLOS offers accepted authors the opportunity to publish the peer review history of their manuscript alongside the final article. The peer review history package includes the complete editorial decision letter for each revision, with reviews, and your responses to reviewer comments, including attachments. If the peer reviewers have chosen to sign their reviews, their names will also appear.

If your submission is accepted for publication, you’ll be invited to opt-in to publish the peer review history of your manuscript using a form in our submission system.

Sharing peer review history enriches the scientific record, increases transparency and accountability, and helps to reinforce the validity of your research by displaying the thoroughness of the peer review process it has undergone.

The journal reserves the right not to publish peer review history in special cases, for example, due to an ethical consideration, such as the inclusion of information about a vulnerable population.

Authors can request that submissions (with reviewer reports, if relevant) rejected from one PLOS journal be transferred to another PLOS journal for further consideration there. Manuscripts will never be transferred between the journals without an author’s consent.

We trust that reviewers for any PLOS journal are willing to have their reviews considered by the editors of another PLOS journal.

In addition, PLOS ONE has partnered with the Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium to help ensure that the time and expertise that reviewers devote to assessing a manuscript is not lost if authors decide to submit to another journal. As such, PLOS ONE may transmit reviews to other NPRC journals at the request of the authors. We will contact individual reviewers for permission to transmit their names to the recipient journal and will otherwise transmit the reports anonymously.

Authors may submit a formal appeal for rejected submissions. Appeal requests must be made in writing to [email protected] with the word “appeal” in the subject line. Authors must 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. Priority is given to new submissions, so the appeal process may take longer than the original submission process.