PLOS ONE is a peer-reviewed, open-access, multidisciplinary journal published by the Public Library of Science (PLOS). It is one of the largest journals in the world by article volume and is a common submission target because of its broad scope and a review policy that differs from most subject-specific journals in one important way: reviewers assess whether the work is scientifically sound, not how novel or high-impact it appears to be. This guide covers what CASRAI’s audience of research administrators, editorial-office staff, and authors actually need to plan a submission: scope and fit, the criteria reviewers apply, formatting requirements, the review process, and publication fees.
This is an independent, editorially neutral guide. For the authoritative, current instructions at the point you submit, always defer to PLOS ONE’s own Submission Guidelines and Criteria for Publication pages, since fees and formatting specifics are revised periodically.
Scope: what PLOS ONE publishes
PLOS ONE accepts original research across the natural sciences, engineering, medicine, and mathematics, rather than restricting itself to a single discipline. This breadth is deliberate: the journal was designed around the idea that a paper’s value shouldn’t be gated by a subject-specific editor’s judgment of significance before publication, but assessed on its own methodological merits. Before submitting, confirm your manuscript is a fit for a broad-scope, soundness-first journal rather than a discipline-specific outlet with its own novelty bar — the two models select for different things, and a paper that’s a poor fit for one may be a strong fit for the other.
Criteria for publication: soundness, not novelty or impact
PLOS ONE’s defining editorial policy, in place since its 2006 launch, is that peer review evaluates technical and scientific soundness only — not perceived novelty, significance, or likely citation impact. Per PLOS ONE’s own Criteria for Publication, a manuscript should be accepted if:
- The study presents the results of original research.
- Experiments, statistics, and other analyses are performed to a high technical standard and are described in sufficient detail for a reader (or another researcher) to reproduce them.
- Conclusions are presented in an appropriate fashion and are supported by the data.
- The article is written in an intelligible fashion in standard English.
- The research meets all applicable standards for the ethics of experimentation and research integrity.
- The article adheres to appropriate reporting guidelines and community standards for data availability.
This is the single biggest practical difference from a typical subject-specific journal, and it’s the reason PLOS ONE is often described as pioneering the “soundness-only” review model that a number of other large multidisciplinary and mega-journals (including Scientific Reports) later adopted. It means a well-executed, methodologically rigorous study with a modest or incremental finding is a legitimate fit — editors and reviewers are instructed not to reject on the basis of perceived importance alone.
How review actually works
After initial technical/scope screening by PLOS ONE staff, manuscripts are assigned to a member of the journal’s Editorial Board — an Academic Editor who is a subject-matter expert in the manuscript’s area. The Academic Editor manages peer review, typically inviting external reviewers, and is responsible for judging whether the manuscript satisfies the soundness-based criteria above. When the Academic Editor is satisfied the criteria are met, the manuscript is provisionally accepted; it then proceeds to production. This differs from journals where a subject editor makes an independent significance-based judgment before or after review — at PLOS ONE, the editor’s role is to confirm the soundness bar is met, not to rank the paper against other submissions for perceived importance.
For background on how editorial platforms track this process end to end (submission, screening, reviewer invitation, revision, decision), see CASRAI’s Manuscript Submission Process guide and the Editorial Manager vs ScholarOne vs OJS comparison — PLOS journals use Editorial Manager.
Manuscript formatting requirements
Per PLOS ONE’s Submission Guidelines, key formatting points authors most often get wrong or overlook include:
- Abstract: unstructured (a single paragraph, not broken into labeled subsections), with a maximum of 300 words. It should describe the main objective(s), how the study was done (without excessive methodological detail), and summarize the most important results and their significance — without citations, and avoiding abbreviations where possible.
- Main text length: PLOS ONE imposes no strict word limit on the main text of a research article, unlike journals such as NEJM or JAMA that cap length tightly. Length should be dictated by the amount of detail needed to support reproducibility, not by an editorial ceiling.
- Financial disclosure: funding sources are declared separately through the submission system’s financial disclosure section, not listed in the acknowledgments or manuscript file itself.
- Acknowledgments: editors and peer reviewers for the specific manuscript should not be named in the acknowledgments section.
- Data availability: authors must deposit or otherwise make available all data underlying the reported findings, consistent with PLOS’s data availability policy, and state where reviewers/readers can access it. This is checked as part of the soundness criteria, not treated as optional supplementary practice.
- Figures: figures have their own preparation and format requirements (resolution, file type, and caption placement in the manuscript text rather than embedded in the image file). See CASRAI’s Scientific Figure Rules for Journal Submission guide for the general standards that apply across PLOS and most other major publishers.
- Cover letter: PLOS ONE’s submission system requests a cover letter at submission; see CASRAI’s Cover Letter for Journal Submission dictionary entry for what that document typically needs to cover.
Always verify current formatting specifics directly against PLOS ONE’s live Submission Guidelines before finalizing a manuscript, since production-level requirements (exact reference style, supported file types) are the kind of detail publishers revise without much notice.
Publication fees
PLOS ONE is fully open access and funds publication through an article processing charge (APC), payable upon acceptance rather than at submission. As published on PLOS’s own Publication Fees page, current standard fees include a base rate for most research articles, with separate (lower) rates for certain structured formats such as Registered Report Protocols and Lab Protocols. Fees are charged at the rate in effect on the date of submission and are subject to periodic change, so treat any specific dollar figure as a snapshot rather than a fixed number — check the live fee page before budgeting a submission. See CASRAI’s general Submission Fee dictionary entry for how APCs differ from up-front submission fees (PLOS ONE does not charge a fee simply to submit).
Authors who cannot cover the fee can request assistance through PLOS’s fee-assistance program; per PLOS ONE’s guidance, this must be requested at the time of submission using the form built into the submission system, not after acceptance.
Is PLOS ONE the right venue for your paper?
Because PLOS ONE selects on soundness rather than novelty, and because it is genuinely broad-scope rather than niche, it’s a reasonable fit for: methodologically solid studies with incremental or confirmatory findings; interdisciplinary work that doesn’t map cleanly onto a single subject journal’s scope; negative or null results that are technically sound but wouldn’t clear a novelty-based bar elsewhere; and researchers who value a comparatively fast, criteria-based decision over chasing a high-prestige subject journal. It’s a poor fit if your primary goal is placement in a journal with a high impact factor as a proxy for perceived significance — PLOS ONE’s editorial model is explicitly not built around that kind of gatekeeping. Some authors and institutions also ask whether PLOS ONE’s scale and business model make it a predatory or low-quality outlet; CASRAI addresses that question directly and separately in Is PLOS ONE a Predatory Journal? — in short, no: it is a long-established, indexed, editorially governed journal from a non-profit publisher, which is a materially different profile from a predatory journal.
For general grounding on where a journal’s impact factor comes from and how to look one up, including a PLOS ONE-specific entry, see How to Look Up a Journal’s Impact Factor. For how PLOS ONE specifically now requires structured author contribution statements, see the PLOS ONE Author Contributions Statement dictionary entry.
Frequently asked questions
Does PLOS ONE evaluate novelty or impact during review?
No. PLOS ONE’s stated Criteria for Publication evaluate technical and scientific soundness — whether the methods are rigorous, the conclusions are supported by the data, and ethical/reporting standards are met. Perceived novelty, significance, or likely citation impact are explicitly not review criteria.
Does PLOS ONE require a structured abstract?
No. PLOS ONE requires an unstructured, single-paragraph abstract of no more than 300 words, unlike journals that mandate labeled sections such as Background/Methods/Results/Conclusions.
Is there a strict word limit for the main manuscript text?
No. PLOS ONE does not impose a strict main-text word limit on research articles, in contrast to journals such as NEJM, JAMA, or The Lancet, which cap length tightly.
How much does it cost to publish in PLOS ONE?
PLOS ONE charges an article processing charge (APC) upon acceptance, not at submission; the exact rate depends on article type and the rate in effect on your submission date. Check PLOS ONE’s own Publication Fees page for the current figure before budgeting, and note that fee-assistance requests must be made at submission through the submission system.
What system does PLOS ONE use to manage submissions?
PLOS journals, including PLOS ONE, use Editorial Manager to track submissions through screening, reviewer assignment, revision, and decision.
Is PLOS ONE a predatory journal?
No. See CASRAI’s dedicated guide, Is PLOS ONE a Predatory Journal?, for the full reasoning, but in brief: it is published by a non-profit (PLOS), has an established editorial board and formal peer review, and is broadly indexed — a different profile from journals typically flagged as predatory.
