Now that my paper has been accepted by PLoS ONE, what actions do I need to take going forwards, who should I contact if I have any questions, and how long until my paper will appear online?

Answer:

Congratulations on your acceptance with PLoS ONE!  Shortly after the Academic Editor sends the Accept decision letter through our Editorial Manager system, our production staff will initiate general quality checks.  You do not need to take any action at this point.  In fact, we would recommend holding off asking any questions regarding your paper until the ONE production team emails the corresponding author with further instructions on how to proceed.  This letter to the corresponding author is usually sent within a week, and it will specifically address whether there are any problems with the manuscript’s formatting or figure files and what steps you need to take going forwards towards publication.

In rare cases, a paper will not need further formatting changes. If you do not receive a letter a week after acceptance, and you have minor edits such as correcting typos, please send an email to ONE_Production@plos.org.

Commonly, authors are concerned about their figure files because they receive Artwork Quality warnings or failure messages.  Please realize that you do not need to pay any attention to these messages.  In general, the main requirements are as follows:

1. Should be a .tif or .eps file
2. The resolution should be between 300 and 600 dpi/ppi
3. The file size should be under 10 MB. Try LZW compression if your figure is larger than 10 MB.
4. The figure should be saved in RGB color mode.
5. The print size should be between 83 mm and 173 mm wide.
6. Each figure should have clearly legible lines and text.

After you have read the email sent by our production team to the corresponding author of your paper thoroughly, please feel free to email any further questions or concerns to ONE_Production@plos.org.  After acceptance, all inquiries should be sent to this address.

It is very important to note that PLoS ONE does not provide author proofs.  When the production team sends their requests letter to the corresponding author, you should use the opportunity to make sure everything in the manuscript is ready to publish including that all legends for figures match the images.  Again, this will be your last chance to see your files before publication.

On average, it takes about a month after a submission has been accepted through peer-review to be published online.  However, please realize that this time-frame varies greatly for each paper and it heavily relies on an author’s timely response.  To learn more about the timeline for your paper to be picked up by Pub Med Central and indexed by PubMed please read this post.

Again, congratulations on your acceptance, and remember to wait for our capable production team to send their requests letter before taking any action.  They will let you know if there are any technical problems with your paper including issues with formatting or figure quality.

Does PLoS ONE formally publish new species papers that are recognized by the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) and the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN)?

Absolutely! Every month, PLoS ONE publishes several new species papers that describe a variety of new animal, plant, and fungi taxons.  As many authors in the zoological and botanical communities know, the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) and International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN) require new species articles to be published in a durable (i.e. paper) medium in addition to any electronic medium.

PLoS ONE has worked closely with the ICZN and ICBN to establish a protocol where new species papers published in our electronic only journal can be formally recognized by these two institutions.  You can read more about this process at http://iczn.org/sites/iczn.org/files/Almost%20E-only-PLoSInterimSolution.pdf or by visiting our author guidelines at http://www.plosone.org/static/guidelines.action.

If you are an author and are thinking about submitting a new species paper to PLoS ONE, please read our new species guidelines online before you submit.  However, please note that our process for managing new animal and plant species does not apply to bacteria, viruses, algae, or re-classifying species within existing taxonomy.  Authors will need to adhere to their institutions’ specific guidelines for these new species articles.

At PLoS, we’re dedicated to the tenet of Open Access, making academic literature widely available on the web. However, with an ever-growing pool of scientific literature, our goals have to consider not only making content available, but also accessible. With the breadth of articles we aggregate, you need a strong tool to find the specific information you want. Our authors have published on methods to get the most out of search engine queries and even how search engine data can yield its own important results. To help our users navigate the sea of information PLoS publishes daily, we introduced an Advanced Search function with a broad range of filters.

When searching for PLoS articles, the standard search bar at the top of the page will return all results where the term has been mentioned throughout the entire article (see Figure 1). While this is good for very specific searches, a search for a term like “influenza” will yield over 2,000 results across the PLoS journals. This is where the Advanced Search’s filtering system comes in handy.

Figure 1

Advanced Search

Advanced Search provides multiple filters for results by limiting what field you’re searching (Title, Abstract, Author Name, etc). Using the pull-down menu (Figure 2), you can search for your term in the Title or Abstract of the article, which makes it more likely that the article is focused on that subject. You can also search for specific authors, editors or author affiliations. This allows you to find papers published or edited by your colleagues or researchers at a specific institution.

You can make your search more targeted and powerful but using the search box to combine these different searches using the qualifiers AND, OR or NOT, limiting the search results further. For example, you can shorten the results by saying you want articles that mention “influenza” in the abstract, but NOT “vaccine.”

Figure 2

Advanced Filters

Below the search block is a series of filters that allows you to limit your results further: Journal, Subject Category and Article Type (Figure 3). This allows you to filter the search results down to specific PLoS journals, or a subject area you are studying (e.g., Genetics of Disease or Systems Biology) or down to a particular article type, like Research Articles or Editorials.

Figure 3

Sorting Results

After performing the search, you can sort the results using an additional drop-down menu, found at the top of the search results. “Relevance” is the default setting, but you can also sort by Most Viewed, which will yield the most popular article by page views meeting your search criteria, and Date—so you see the newest items that have published since the last time you performed your keyword search.

Related to the sorting types, each search result features links its Views, Citations and Bookmarks. Hovering over these links provides a breakdown of each statistic. Views will be broken down to the number of views in each format (HTML, XML and PDF) and Citations will break down by databases the citations are listed in (e.g., PubMed Central or Web of Science®) (Figure 4).

Figure 4

In addition to publishing the highest quality scientific research, PLoS is dedicated to making our content accessible to our audience. Our team is always working to find new ways to assist the readers of our journals, and we hope that our Advanced Search will get you the information that you seek.

This post is by Nicholas Ellinwood, who has worked with PLoS ONE since last year. He is a Publications Assistant who focuses on assigning Academic Editors to appropriate manuscripts, managing email queries and handling our new species papers.

Can I formally appeal a final decision on my paper if I believe my paper satisfies all of PLoS ONE’s acceptance criteria?

Although PLoS ONE does not approve all appeal requests, if you feel that your paper was Rejected due to considerations outside of PLoS ONE’s acceptance criteria, then you can submit a formal appeal request to the PLoS ONE staff by emailing plosone@plos.org and including a point-by-point response to all of the reviewers comments and a detailed rebuttal letter explaining why you think your paper is publishable.

Our internal editors thoroughly review all rebuttal letters, and we do grant appeal requests if we think your paper would benefit from a re-review.

The peer-review process for an appeal is typically much longer than a normal submission because of the complexity of the manuscript’s history.  Also, we require two Academic Editors to evaluate all appeals and to jointly co-sign the decision letters.

PLoS ONE closely monitors the appeals that it accepts, and will mediate between a disagreement between the two Academic Editors assigned to the resubmission if necessary.

Before you submit an appeal request, remember that PLoS ONE requires all research articles to fulfill the following acceptance 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 and community standards for data availability.

In recent weeks, we’ve seen an increased number of questions from authors of recently published papers querying us about why their paper isn’t found in PubMed.  So this week, I thought it would be helpful to address the timeline for articles appearing in PubMed and PubMed Central.

Upon the publication of your paper, your files are sent directly to PubMed Central. At this point, it takes an average of 3-5 days to appear in PubMed Central, and 1-1/2 to 2 weeks to appear in PubMed. These delays are due to internal quality control checks and data processing that PubMed Central and PubMed conduct on the files.

To find answers to more commonly asked questions please check out our Most Common Questions page. If you have a more immediate question though, please contact us directly at plosone [at] plos.org.

As you may know, Ask everyONE was created to help authors with common questions they encounter while submitting their manuscript to PLoS ONE.  Now, I’d like to introduce PLoS ONE Video Shorts – new videos that will help answer the questions authors, academic editors and reviewers have about Editorial Manager (our peer review software).  The videos, 18 in all,  averaging less than 3 minutes in length, were created by the PLoS ONE staff and are designed to teach you how to navigate EM quickly.

The video shorts can be located in our Most Common Questions (FAQ) page or found in the Ask everyONE category on the left hand side of this blog down below.

For an answer that is even speedier than emailing us, we urge our authors, academic editors and reviewers to check our Common Questions FAQ and/or watch the Video Shorts before emailing us. If you can’t find your answer there, please contact us at plosone@plos.org.

This video is for PLoS ONE academic editors who would like to discuss a manuscript with another academic editor in Editorial Manager.

Back to FAQ page

This is a general tutorial for PLoS ONE reviewers and will give an overview of how to navigate the reviewer action links in Editorial Manager.

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This tutorial is for PLoS ONE academic editors who need to re-invite peer reviewers to a revised manuscript.

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This video will show authors how to overcome a common error when submitting their manuscript.

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