PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases and COVID-19

April 13, 2020 PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases General

A message from PLOS NTDs Managing Editor, Kendall McKenzie

We hope you are safe and well during these turbulent times. We would like to share what the journal has been working on to prepare for Coronavirus/COVID-19 research.

PLOS NTDs welcomes COVID-19 research

COVID-19 has morphed into a global health problem. In order to address this pressing issue affecting the world’s most neglected communities, PLOS NTDs will consider SARS-CoV-2/ COVID-19 manuscripts that are relevant for global health and resource-poor nations. Research articles, viewpoints, or other front matter are welcome.

PLOS is building a cross-journal collection to house all COVID-19 research. All relevant published manuscripts will appear together in this collection. Articles will be added to the collection page as soon as they publish.

COVID-19 editorial board and reviewer database

To expedite the handling of this new research, we are gathering a group of editors who shepherd COVID-19-focused manuscripts through the review process, with the full support of the journal staff. If you or someone you know is interested in joining this coalition of COVID-19 editors or reviewers, please email me at kmckenzie@plos.org.

Sharing Information with the World Health Organization (WHO)

PLOS supports the joint statement on Sharing research data and findings relevant to the novel coronavirus (nCoV) outbreak. As part of an initiative between PLOS (and other publishers) and the World Health Organization (WHO), we will share with WHO all relevant clinical information about this outbreak (original research only), usually within 2 business days. If the paper is accepted for publication, we forward the full submitted manuscript to our WHO contact.

In parallel, once we receive a COVID-19 submission, we encourage the authors to deposit their manuscript in a public preprint server. We would recommend the preprint server medRxiv (https://www.medrxiv.org/), which posts clinically relevant manuscripts. This process is free of charge.

Just published: New Editorial article

The PLOS NTDs Editors-in-Chief in partnership with founding EiC Peter Hotez, and Deputy Editors Maria Elena Bottazzi and Sunit K. Singh have published an editorial, Will COVID-19 become the next neglected tropical disease? We look forward to engaging in this discourse with you.

Help us prioritize and expedite your research

To help the PLOS NTDs journal team prioritize and expedite the processing of your COVID-19 submissions, we encourage you to complete the “Suggested Reviewers” and “Request Editors” sections of the manuscript form.

Please know that we are doing everything we can to move all submissions (including non-COVID-19 papers) through the review process, but as many of our editors and reviewers are working on the outbreak in some capacity, or are at home and unable to dedicate much time, there will likely be some delays. We thank you for your patience and look forward to working together to publish relevant and timely research for our communities.