PLOS

Prepare your manuscript for PLOS Biology.

Review the checklist, choose your article type, and turn your draft into a cleaner submission package.

Checked 2026-07-15

Check readiness free Prepare this manuscript

Article types

Research Article

Review

Systematic Review

Clinical Trial

Perspective

Readiness requirements

Review the key details below, or download the complete checklist with every stored source-backed requirement.

Abstract length

Research Article: Stage 2 Preregistered Research Article Manuscript Template Please follow the guidelines below when preparing the Stage 2 manuscript: ● Abstract PREREGISTERED RESEARCH ARTICLE GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS, PLOS BIOLOGY UPDATED JANUARY 28 2020 7 The Abstract in the Stage 1 manuscript should have an additional outcome paragraph added at Stage 2. ● Introduction, Summary and Methods o Apart from minor stylistic revisions, the Introduction and Methods section cannot be altered from the approved Stage 1 manuscript, and the stated hypotheses cannot be amended or appended.
However, the Abstract should be written as a single paragraph without these headers.

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Do not include any citations in the Abstract.
Stage 1 Protocol Manuscript Template Stage 1 Protocol manuscripts should include the following sections: ● Abstract Brief explanation of research question, its relevance, and the proposed investigative approach. (Note: This section will have an additional outcome paragraph added in Stage 2 manuscripts).

Reference style

Articlo formats your supplied references to the journal's stored style and checks that citations match the reference list; source validity is not verified.
Example: a figure file named “Fig1.tif” should match the citation “Fig 1” and the figure label “Fig 1.” in the caption.

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Pilot data can include details of any preliminary data that have already been obtained (approach, materials and methods, results, analytical observations etc.) Pilot data present at Stage 1 will need to be clearly distinguished from data subsequently obtained at Stage 2. ● Secondary Analyses (optional) If the study proposes secondary analyses of existing databases, please provide full details of the data to be analysed, its origin and any relevant information and citations with respect to the origin of the dataset and any previous analyses that have been performed.
Please follow these instructions when preparing and submitting blot/gel data files: The file should be named ‘S1_raw_images’ and uploaded as a Supporting Information file or deposited at a suitable publicly-available data repository, with the dataset identifier (DOI or other form of persistent identifier) provided in the Data Availability Statement.
Accession numbers or a citation to the DOI should also be provided when the data set is mentioned within the manuscript.
Estimated effect sizes should be justified with reference to the existing literature.
In-text citations You must cite tables in numerical order upon first mention in the text.
Do not include citations in abstracts.
Do not provide a shortened DOI or the URL.
In some cases authors may not be able to obtain accession numbers of DOIs until the manuscript is accepted; in these cases, the authors must provide these numbers at acceptance.
Do not cite the following sources in the reference list: Submitted research should not rely upon retracted research.
Do not cite the following sources in the reference list: Unavailable and unpublished work, including manuscripts that have been submitted but not yet accepted (e.g., “unpublished work,” “data not shown”).
Do not cite the following sources in the reference list: Personal communications (these should be supported by a letter from the relevant authors but not included in the reference list).
Place all panels from a multi-part figure into a single page and single file: Renumber all figures and in-text citations accordingly.
Repositories may be subject-specific (e.g., GenBank for sequences and PDB for structures), general, or institutional, as long as DOIs or accession numbers are provided and the data are at least as open as CC BY.

Figure and table rules

Keep every figure and table numbered, captioned, and cited in the manuscript. Keep figures embedded; Articlo also extracts numbered source files for the package.
Tables require a label (e.g., “Table 1”) and brief descriptive title to be placed above the table.

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Figures presenting small sample size data (n≤9 independent observations per group) should show the full distribution of the data, as opposed to summary statistics.
Submit figures at the desired dimensions with a resolution no greater than 300-600 dpi.
Cite figures with the format: Fig 1A, Fig 1B, Fig 2, Fig 3, etc.
Please note that figures must be captured between 300 and 600 dpi in order for NAAS to successfully process your figures.
86 inches by 9.19 inches (a 1.5 column figure at maximum height) at 300 dpi corresponds to 1458 pixels by 2757 pixels.
Original images for blots and gels For manuscripts submitted on or after July 1 2019, authors must provide the original, uncropped and minimally adjusted images supporting all blot and gel results reported in an article’s figures and supporting information files.
Do not include figures in the main manuscript file.
Do not embed your tables as images or submit them in separate files.
We are unable to use striking image files that do not include an accompanying caption and credit.
Submitted figures must be publishable under the CC-BY license, thus, with few exceptions, we cannot accept previously published work.
Before we can formally accept a manuscript for publication, figures must meet our requirements.
Use NAAS before submitting to check your figures and convert to our accepted formats.
Figure panels should include some background area above and below bands.
Any non-specific bands from the original image should be included in the figure and explained in the text or figure legend.
In preparing figures, image files should not be manipulated or adjusted in any way that could lead to misinterpretation of the information present in the original image.
In such cases, the alteration must be indicated in the figure by a thin white or black line between the juxtaposed pieces and must be described in the figure legend.
At the height maximum, the figure occupies the whole page and excludes the caption.
Do not include author names, article title, or figure number/title/caption within figure files.
Do not include captions as part of the figure files or submit them in a separate document.
There are two required elements: figure label and figure title.
Cite figures in ascending numeric order upon first appearance in the manuscript file.
In cases where NAAS cannot process your figure file, the tool will provide you with a report of what it could not fix.
NOTE: Supporting Information figures should not be processed through NAAS.
Software If you prefer to assemble figures with vector graphics, we recommend that you use Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape (free).
These figures must be exported to EPS format per our requirements.
Submit TIFF or EPS figures created in standard software.
Policies All figures must comply with PLOS policies covering depictions of humans, and licenses and copyright.
Use the table tool in your text editing software to create tables.
Tables with multiple sections must have a consistent number of columns throughout all sub-sections.
Do not use returns, spaces, or tabs to align content across the table.
Do not submit captions in a separate file.
Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, you will be asked to provide a caption describing the image and a full image credit that details who should be credited with the creation of the image.
DO NOT submit any figures that have been previously copyrighted or contain proprietary data unless you have and can supply written permission from the copyright holder to use that content.
Please make sure to enumerate the specific hypotheses. (NOTE: This section cannot be edited after a Stage 1 in-principle acceptance). ● Summary Table Please include a summary table that aligns each research question with the hypothesis/es used to answer the question, the sampling plan for each hypothesis (e.g.
power analysis, where applicable), the specific statistical analysis/es that will be used to test the hypothesis, and a pre-specification of which outcomes will confirm or disconfirm the hypothesis (to varying degrees of strength where multiple analyses with different possible outcomes are used to interrogate one hypothesis). ● Materials and Methods This section should include all the following, as relevant. (NOTE: This section cannot be edited after Stage 1 in-principle acceptance) o Protocol details regarding the following (repeat as necessary for all protocols being proposed): sampling, cell lines/organisms (i.e.
Please follow these instructions when preparing and submitting blot/gel data files: Authors should label each raw blot or gel image to clearly annotate the loading order, identity of experimental samples, method used to capture the image, and to specify which figure panel was generated from that original image.
Molecular weight markers should be included or indicated on the raw image, and any lanes not included in the final figure should be marked with an “X” above the lane label on the original blot/gel image.
If data from multiple blot or gel images are needed to illustrate the results, the different images should not be spliced together; they should be clearly distinguished as separate panels within the figure and the legend should note that they represent different gels, blots, or exposures.
Use an Insert tool to place figures.
Use Photoshop or GIMP to edit your figure.
Do not submit any figures, photos, tables, or other works that have been previously copyrighted or that contain proprietary data unless you have and can supply written permission from the copyright holder to use that content.
Tables must be editable, cell-based objects.
Do not submit tables in a separate file(s).
They present results from a limited set of experiments, typically summarized in 3-4 figures or fewer.
Reporting blot and gel results Authors must comply with the following guidelines when preparing figures that report results from blots (including, but not limited to, western blots) and electrophoretic gels: In accordance with our guidance on Preparing Figures from Image Files and our Policy on Concerns about Data or Figures, images should not be adjusted in any way that could affect the scientific information displayed.
Reporting blot and gel results Authors must comply with the following guidelines when preparing figures that report results from blots (including, but not limited to, western blots) and electrophoretic gels: Images in figures should not be overcropped around the bands of interest.
Reporting blot and gel results Authors must comply with the following guidelines when preparing figures that report results from blots (including, but not limited to, western blots) and electrophoretic gels: When a comparative analysis amongst bands is performed, all relevant samples should be run on the same gel/blot.
Reporting blot and gel results Authors must comply with the following guidelines when preparing figures that report results from blots (including, but not limited to, western blots) and electrophoretic gels: Each figure should include all relevant controls, and when relevant, control samples should be run on the same blot or gel as the experimental samples.
Reporting blot and gel results Authors must comply with the following guidelines when preparing figures that report results from blots (including, but not limited to, western blots) and electrophoretic gels: A figure panel should not include composite images of bands originating from different blots, exposures, or gels.
Reporting blot and gel results Authors must comply with the following guidelines when preparing figures that report results from blots (including, but not limited to, western blots) and electrophoretic gels: If lanes from a single blot/gel image have been rearranged in preparing a figure, image splicing should be clearly denoted by vertical black lines on the figure and the figure legend should provide details of how the figure was made.
Reporting blot and gel results Authors must comply with the following guidelines when preparing figures that report results from blots (including, but not limited to, western blots) and electrophoretic gels: Please also see our guidelines on Preparing Figures from Image Files for further details.
Do not put figure files in the manuscript body.
Place each table in your manuscript file directly after the paragraph in which it is first cited (read order).
Place legends, footnotes, and other text below the table.
experimental population), materials and reagents, procedure/intervention, deliverables.
They have fewer requirements than figures that are included in the main article, and they need to be uploaded separately.
The quality of a low-resolution figure cannot be improved by simply increasing the resolution in graphics software.
Place all panels from a multi-part figure into a single page and single file: Combine multiple panels into one page, or break them apart into separate figures.
We cannot publish TIFF figures that span multiple pages.
Upload each figure as an individual file that is separate from the manuscript.
Place the legend directly after the title of the figure to which it belongs.
Place any figure credits in the last sentence of the legend.
The more closely your tables adhere to these requirements at submission, the fewer times you will need to revise your manuscript to meet them.
We cannot typeset tables that are graphic objects.
Do not insert text boxes or graphics within your tables.
Do not insert tables within tables or cells within cells.
Tables do not have strict width and height requirements.
Do not split your table or otherwise try to make the table appear within the manuscript margins if it does not fit on one page.
Creating Source Images with Specialized Software While we cannot offer assistance using the software in this section, the instructions below indicate the proper settings for creating specialized scientific images that meet our figure requirements.

Funding statement

Add or confirm the author-written Funding statement; Articlo flags it if author input is still needed.
Do not include funding sources in the Acknowledgments or anywhere else in the manuscript file.

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Your funding statement should describe any funding that helped to support the work, as follows: Include grant numbers and the URLs of any funder's website.
Use the full name, not acronyms, of funding institutions, and use initials to identify authors who received the funding.
Themes include, but are not limited to, transparency, established and novel methodological standards, sources of bias (conflicts of interest, selection, inflation, funding, etc.), data sharing, evaluation metrics, assessment, reward, and funding structures.
Your funding statement should describe any funding that helped to support the work, as follows: Describe the role of any sponsors or funders in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
The COVER LETTER should include: ● A brief scientific case for consideration - what is the scientific question you are addressing and why is it important to the field? ● Information on recently published literature that is relevant to this research question. ● A statement confirming that all necessary support (e.g. funding, facilities) and approvals (e.g. ethics) are in place for the proposed research.
Funding information should only be entered in the financial disclosure section of the submission system.
Your funding statement should describe any funding that helped to support the work, as follows: If the study was unfunded, please provide the following statement: "The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.".

Competing interests

Review: Add or confirm the author-written Competing interests statement; Articlo flags it if author input is still needed.

Data availability statement

Add or confirm the author-written Data availability statement; Articlo flags it if author input is still needed.
All numerical values used to generate graphs must be provided as per the PLOS Data Availability policy.

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Accession numbers (and version numbers, if appropriate) should be provided in the Data Availability Statement.
Following a Stage 1 in-principle acceptance decision, authors are required to register their approved Stage 1 Protocol with the Center for Open Science or another recognised repository, either publicly or under private embargo until submission of the Stage 2 manuscript.
These analyses should be reported in a separate section of the Results titled “Exploratory analyses” Authors should be careful not to base their conclusions entirely on the outcome of such post-hoc analyses. ● Data o In according with the PLOS data availability policy, raw data must be made freely available in a public repository.

Ethics statement

Add or confirm the author-written Ethics statement; Articlo flags it if author input is still needed.
correction of typographic errors) must be clearly marked in the Stage 2 submission.

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o A URL to the (now public) Stage 1 Protocol, which was deposited in a repository, should be added to the Methods section.
o An official Ethics Statement should also be added to the Methods section. ● Results & Discussion o The outcome of all pre-approved analyses from Stage 1 must be reported in the Stage 2 manuscript, except in rare instances where an approved analysis is subsequently shown to be logically flawed or unfounded.
o Any relevant literature that appeared following the date of Stage 1 in-principle acceptance should be covered in the Discussion.
If this is a proposed replication study, full details of replication approach should be provided. ● Data Availability Plan Provide full details of where and how data and/or code produced will be shared (in line with the PLOS Data & Code sharing Policies). ● Ethical Approval Plan Provide details of ethical approval for animal and human subject research.
Depictions of humans Authors submitting manuscripts that include identifying or potentially identifying information must comply with our requirements for informed consent.
Any minor textual changes to the Introduction or Methods (e.g.

Blinded manuscript

Include or confirm the blinded manuscript required by the journal. Articlo checks this item and flags anything that still needs author input.

Cover letter

Provide the claims and editor-specific context for the cover letter; Articlo creates an editable companion without inventing content.
Submitting a Stage 1 Manuscript Stage 1 submissions should include a cover letter and the Protocol manuscript file (details below).

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Authors must collectively certify in the Cover Letter that all non-pilot data was collected after the date of Stage 1 in-principle acceptance (see below for details).
The authors must collectively certify in the Stage 2 Cover Letter that all non-pilot data was collected after the date of Stage 1 in-principle acceptance.
The name should be listed in the manuscript file and included in the submission form.
The cover letter should address the following questions: What is the scientific question you are addressing?
The cover letter should address the following questions: What is the key finding that answers this question?
The cover letter should address the following questions: What is the nature of the evidence you provide in support of your conclusion?
The cover letter should address the following questions: What are the three most recently published articles that are relevant to this question?
The cover letter should address the following questions: What significance do your results have for the field?
The cover letter should address the following questions: What significance do your results have for the broader community (of biologists and/or the public)?
The cover letter should address the following questions: What other novel findings do you present?
The cover letter should address the following questions: Is there additional information that we should take into account?
Submit your manuscript through our submission system.
Maps created using OpenStreetMap data must be accompanied by the following attribution statement: "Contains information from OpenStreetMap and OpenStreetMap Foundation, which is made available under the Open Database License.”.

Author contributions

Provide at minimum one contribution for each author, and use the CRediT taxonomy to describe each contribution.

Supplementary files

Review: Include every cited supplementary file and use matching labels in the manuscript.
Perspective: Include every cited supplementary file and use matching labels in the manuscript.

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Clinical Trial: Include every cited supplementary file and use matching labels in the manuscript.
Embed or attach the author-supplied supplementary material so Articlo can extract and label it for the package.

Title page and author information

Each author on the list must have an affiliation.
Include an email address for each corresponding author listed on the title page of the manuscript.

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Coauthors should contact the corresponding author for submission details.
If the corresponding author’s institution is a member, they will be notified at acceptance that no fees are required.
Include a full title and a short title for the manuscript using the following format: Avoid specialist abbreviations if possible.
The corresponding author must provide an ORCID iD at the time of submission by entering it in the user profile in the submission system.
Include a full title and a short title for the manuscript using the following format: Titles should be written in sentence case (only the first word of the text, proper nouns, and genus names are capitalized).
Systematic Review / Clinical Trial: Include a full title and a short title for the manuscript using the following format: For clinical trials, systematic reviews, or meta-analyses, the subtitle should include the study design.
Corresponding authorship Designate at least one corresponding author on the title page.

Article structure and word limits

If you ever need to email files to the journal office, our system has a 10 MB attachment limit, meaning that we will not receive any emails larger than this size.
In such cases, the deviation must be reported in the Stage 2 submission.

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The a priori power must be 0.9 or higher for all proposed hypothesis tests.
For the Stage 2 manuscript, once the study is complete, these instances of future tense should be changed to past tense.
Such analyses are admissible but must be clearly justified in the text, and appropriately caveated as not having been approved in the Stage 1 Protocol.
Data files should be appropriately time stamped to show that data was collected after Stage 1 Protocol approval and not before.
Please follow these instructions when preparing and submitting blot/gel data files: Please note, there is a 20 MB maximum file size.
Use only Arial, Times, or Symbol font in 8-12 point..
Research Article: In cases where the pre-approved Stage 1 protocol is altered due to unforeseen circumstances (e.g. change of equipment or unanticipated technical error), the authors must consult the editors PREREGISTERED RESEARCH ARTICLE GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS, PLOS BIOLOGY UPDATED JANUARY 28 2020 2 immediately for advice, and prior to the completion of data collection.
For inference by Bayes factors, authors must be able to guarantee data collection until the Bayes factor is at least 10 times in favour of the experimental hypothesis over the null hypothesis (or vice versa).
Height maximum: 2625 pixels (at 300 dpi).
Submit files at a size of 10 MB or less.
Width: 789 pixels at minimum.
Submit Your Manuscript PLOS Biology provides an Open Access platform to showcase your best research and commentary across all areas of biological science.
Research Article: Manuscript Organization Most research article manuscripts should be organized as follows.
Most manuscripts should be organized as follows.
Until then, we do not require journal-specific formatting.
Layout and spacing Manuscript text should be double-spaced.
Use continuous line numbers (do not restart the numbering on each page).
Do not use MathType, Equation Editor, or the Insert→Equation function for only a portion of an equation.
Equations should not contain a mix of different equation tools.
If you do not use these exclusively, provide the SI value in parentheses after each value.
Gene prefixes such as those used for oncogenes or cellular localization should be shown in roman typeface (e.g., v-fes, c-MYC).
Contributions will be published with the final article, and they should accurately reflect contributions to the work.
Review: Include a brief review of the key literature.
If there are relevant controversies or disagreements in the field, they should be mentioned so that a non-expert reader can delve into these issues further.
Manuscripts should not include priority claims.
For example, “the first demonstration of this” should be changed to “the first demonstration, to our knowledge, of this.”.
PLOS journals require authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception.
To ensure equitable recognition and avoid any appearance of partiality, do not include editors or peer reviewers—named or unnamed—in the Acknowledgments.
You should avoid citing retracted articles unless you need to discuss retracted work to provide historical context for your submitted research.
Image files should not be manipulated or adjusted in any way that could lead to misinterpretation of the information present in the original image.
Paired or non-independent data should be presented to include information about whether changes are consistent across individuals.
Accession numbers All appropriate data sets, images, and information should be deposited in an appropriate public repository.
In all other cases, these numbers must be provided at full submission.
Identifiers should be provided in parentheses after the entity on first use.
All novel structures must have been deposited in a community endorsed database prior to submission (please see our list of recommended repositories ).
The striking image should visually represent the article in a striking and eye-catching way.
Striking images should not contain potentially identifying images of people.
To see what must be declared, view our financial disclosure policy.
If related work has been or will be submitted elsewhere or is in press elsewhere, then a copy must be uploaded with the article submitted to PLOS.
The outcomes should be self-contained, rather than fitting within the narrative arc of a larger research project or article.
Research Article: Short Reports should be organized as the Research Article.
Data If your manuscript includes original research data/analyses, you must ensure that it complies with PLOS’ data policy.
All resources or tools, and the outputs of initiatives must be open and accessible to all.
Formal Comments must be coherent, concise, and well-argued, and are subject to the PLOS Biology criteria for publication.
Please include details of criteria for data inclusion and exclusion (e.g. outlier extraction).
Where analysis decisions are contingent on the outcome of prior analyses, these contingencies must be specified and adhered to.
Since publication bias over-inflates published estimates of effect size, power analysis must be based on the lowest available or meaningful estimate of the effect size.
For studies involving analyses with Bayes factors, the predictions of the theory must be specified so that a Bayes factor can be calculated.
Authors should indicate what distribution will be used to represent the predictions of the theory and how its parameters will be specified.
Please make clear what extent of prior observation you have had; secondary analysis of existing data may be bias-prone, which should be avoided.
Whilst it is not necessary to provide original images at time of initial submission, we will require these files before a manuscript can be accepted.
All labeling and annotation should be performed without obscuring any data or background bands.
A manuscript must comply with the above requirements, and the guidelines below, in order to be published.
The background and contrast should not be modified to notably alter the visibility of data, background, or non-specific bands.
Any adjustments to improve visibility of the data must be consistently applied to the entire image.
Additional information: Images must contain the background “noise” they originally contained.
The background should not appear as one uniform color.
Source images created in EPS format need to be compressed (in your compression format of choice) and should be no larger than full page size.
Submit in EPS format, or use NAAS to convert to TIFF.
Do not use Google, Mapquest, or other copyrighted maps.
If you require further information, please contact the journal before submitting.
Authors using this image should replace it prior to submission.
Do not use returns, spaces, or tabs to align content across columns.
Use a standard font size and any standard font, except for the font named “Symbol”.
Use the key to understand the paragraph marks shown in the examples on this page.
Use only separate cells, ordered lists, unordered lists, or returns to separate content onto individual lines.
Use a single tab to indent individual pieces of content.
Do not use spaces to create a new line, indent, or justify content.
Use only solid colors, with no patterns or gradients.
Your file should not be locked or protected.
Use the recommended name by consulting the appropriate genetic nomenclature database (e.g., HGNC for human genes; we strongly recommend using this tool to check against previously approved names).
Allergens The systematic allergen nomenclature of the World Health Organization/International Union of Immunological Societies (WHO/IUIS) Allergen Nomenclature Sub-committee should be used for manuscripts that include the description or use of allergenic proteins.
For manuscripts describing new allergens, the systematic name of the allergen should be approved by the WHO/IUIS Allergen Nomenclature Sub-committee prior to manuscript publication.
The current address should be listed in the byline and clearly labeled “current address.” At a minimum, the address must include the author’s current institution, city, and country.
If there is a particular reason that bar or line graphs are preferred, these must include inferential error bars: SD - standard deviation of the population, or CI - confidence intervals.
Data reporting All data and related metadata underlying the findings reported in a submitted manuscript should be deposited in an appropriate public repository, unless already provided as part of the submitted article.
Small and macromolecule crystal data Manuscripts reporting new and unpublished three-dimensional structures must include sufficient supporting data and detailed descriptions of the methodologies used to allow the reproduction and validation of the structures.
Small molecule single crystal data Authors reporting X-Ray crystallographic structures of small organic, metal-organic, and inorganic molecules must deposit their data with the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC), the Inorganic Crystal Structure Database (ICSD), or similar community databases providing a recognized validation functionality.
Macromolecular structures Authors reporting novel macromolecular structures must have deposited their data prior to submission with the Worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB), the Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank (BMRB), the Electron Microscopy Data Bank (EMDB), or other community databases providing a recognized validation functionality.
Striking images should ideally be high resolution, eye-catching, single panel images, and should ideally avoid containing added details such as text, scale bars, and arrows.
To be appropriate for PLOS Biology, translational biological research should demonstrate the potential to advance our insights into the understanding, detection, diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of human disease.
Negative updates require clear, well-supported experiments demonstrating and explaining why the initial observation did not work as expected, or did not hold up to further scrutiny.
Research Article: Negative updates should stand alone as a research article; shorter contributions contesting specific aspects of the execution or analysis of a PLOS Biology article may be more appropriate as a Formal Comment.
Controversial articles are welcomed, but the text should acknowledge that a position is in fact controversial and provide readers with enough background on the differing views.
The Primer should then explain what the findings suggest in terms of next steps: what new avenues of investigation are opened, what new experiments can be tried, what new ideas can now be tested going forward?
Contributors must resist the temptation of self-promotion and instead focus on conveying information to a diverse audience.Community Pages should be written in a succinct, accessible, semi-journalistic style that captures the interest of both specialists and non-specialist readers.
The articles should be aimed at a very broad audience of biologists—an unsolved mystery in a neuroscience topic should be accessible to ecologists and biophysicists, for example.
Procedures for objectively defining exclusion criteria due to technical errors or for any other reasons must be specified, including details of how and under what conditions data would be replaced.
Any covariates or regressors must be stated.
For example, will you use a uniform up to some specified maximum, or a normal/half-normal to represent a likely effect size, or a JZS/Cauchy with a specified scaling constant?
Additionally, if further analysis is needed, please be aware that we may also require you to supply us with your original photographic images in the original file format and at the resolution at which they were first created.
Unmarked grouping of images that should otherwise have been presented separately (for example, from different parts of the same gel, or from different gels, fields, or exposures).
Do not set the total number of pixels to be greater than that in the original image (e.g., from the digital camera attached to your microscope) while keeping the image size the same; otherwise, the computer must create data for you that were not present in the original, and the resulting image is a misrepresentation of the original data.
Should I choose TIFF or EPS?
Use the NAAS tool for help resizing.
LZW compression is required.
The title should be concise and descriptive.
Provide images in EPS format.
Follow these tips for creating high-quality images: Ensure that your images have a resolution of at least 300 pixels per inch (ppi) and appear sharp, not pixelated.
We do not restrict the number of corresponding authors that may be listed on the article in the event of publication.
Review: We do not publish traditional review articles.
Our Perspectives are brief; please ensure that you do not exceed these limits.
Our Primers are brief; please ensure that you do not exceed these limits.
Our Community Pages are brief; please ensure that you do not exceed these limits.
Ensure that you do not significantly exceed these length limits.
We do not recommend compiling the images in Powerpoint as resolution can be lost.
Identifying information includes, but is not limited to: photographs.
Identifying information includes, but is not limited to: radiographs.
Identifying information includes, but is not limited to: pedigrees (family trees).
Identifying information includes, but is not limited to: geospatial maps that can identify a specific location such as a house.
Alignment set in this manner may not be preserved in the published version of the article.
Do not format text in multiple columns.
Please do not embed equations as images.
Poor-quality images cannot be checked.
Do not “clean up” the background of images with rubberstamp or “wipe” tools to improve the aesthetic appearance, or over-adjust the brightness or contrast so that the background is removed.
Text color is limited to black.
PLOS requires the text color to be black.

Reporting guidelines

Include or confirm the reporting guidelines required by the journal. Articlo checks this item and flags anything that still needs author input.

Statistical reporting

Research Article: However, PREREGISTERED RESEARCH ARTICLE GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS, PLOS BIOLOGY UPDATED JANUARY 28 2020 4 unplanned exploratory analyses will be admissible in a separate section of the Results (see Stage 2 details below). o Statistics: ▪ When relevant, studies involving Neyman-Pearson inference must include a statistical power analysis.

Preprints and prior publication

Include or confirm the preprints and prior publication required by the journal. Articlo checks this item and flags anything that still needs author input.

Submission forms

Include or confirm the submission forms required by the journal. Articlo checks this item and flags anything that still needs author input.

Language and text style

Language Manuscripts must be submitted in English.
Do not use non-standard abbreviations unless they appear at least three times in the text.

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Journal name abbreviations should be those found in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) databases.
Keep abbreviations to a minimum.
Research Article: Above all, Primers should demystify an area of biology, avoid and/or explain technical jargon and provide critical and forward-thinking analysis about how the research article fits into the current state of the field and its future.

Authorship and originality

Author list Authorship requirements All authors must meet the criteria for authorship as outlined in the authorship policy.
If included, these individuals must qualify for authorship according to our criteria.

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Acknowledgments Those who contributed to the work but do not meet our authorship criteria should be listed in the Acknowledgments with a description of the contribution.
Those who contributed to the work but do not meet the criteria for authorship can be mentioned in the Acknowledgments.
When submitting a manuscript, all authors are asked to indicate that they do not have a related or duplicate manuscript under consideration (or accepted) for publication elsewhere.

Manuscript structure

If Pilot Data and Secondary Analysis sections were present in the approved Stage 1 manuscript, those too should remain unaltered. o At Stage 2, any descriptions written in future tense within the Stage 1 manuscript should be changed to past tense.
In such cases the analysis should remain in the Methods (as per the approved Stage 1 manuscript) but omitted from the Results with justification and discussion. o Authors may wish to include additional analyses that were not included in the Stage 1 submission.

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It should mention the techniques used without going into methodological detail and mention the most important results.
Introduction The Introduction should put the focus of the manuscript into a broader context.
The Introduction should conclude with a brief statement of the overall aim of the reported research and a comment about whether that aim was achieved.
The Results section should be written in past tense.
Discussion The Discussion should spell out the major conclusions and interpretations of the work including some explanation on the significance of these conclusions.
The Discussion should be concise and tightly argued.
Materials and Methods The Materials and Methods should provide enough detail to reproduce the findings.
Submit detailed protocols for newer or less established methods.
The reported method should be thoroughly validated, and while presenting new biological insights is encouraged, this is not a requirement for consideration.
Results should go well beyond confirming the original observations.
Ideally the structure of the article should reflect the mystery (e.g. subsections with questions as headings).
The article should end with a discussion of possible means to a solution.
o Full descriptions must be provided of any outcome-neutral criteria that must be met for successful testing of the stated hypotheses.
Footnotes referencing background color should describe it using words, not images or colored text.
Results The Results section should provide details of all of the experiments that are required to support the conclusions of the paper, including information on the number of replicates (if relevant to ensure replicability).
While the research may be preliminary, studies should be advanced to the stage where observations or findings have been confirmed by independent methods or experimental approaches and obvious alternative interpretations have been ruled out.
The article should include a discussion of the basic science relevant to the topic, why it is biologically or medically important, what work has been done on the topic (if any), major challenges to understanding the question at hand, competing hypotheses, and what advances would be necessary to shed light on the problem.
Experimental procedures and materials should be provided in sufficient detail to allow another researcher to repeat the methodology exactly, without requiring further information. o Sampling plan (e.g. power calculations or Bayesian sampling methods etc) should be included unless clearly not appropriate.
Authors with resource limitations are permitted to specify a maximum feasible sample size at which data collection must cease regardless of the Bayes factor, however to be eligible for advance acceptance this number must be sufficiently large that inconclusive results at this sample size would nevertheless be of major importance.
Such quality checks might include the absence of floor or ceiling effects in data distributions, positive controls, or other quality checks. o Any description of prospective methods or analysis plans should be written in future tense.
Do not drag/drop or copy/paste images into the file, because this results in a 72 dpi image.

Article type and manuscript length

Research Article: o Data files should be appropriately time stamped to show that data was collected after Stage 1 in-principle acceptance and not before.
Research Article: Please note that for this article type, the raw data PREREGISTERED RESEARCH ARTICLE GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS, PLOS BIOLOGY UPDATED JANUARY 28 2020 8 itself should be archived in a public repository rather than submitted to the journal as supplementary material.

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Authors must include the structure reference numbers within the main text and submit as Supplementary Information the official validation reports from these databases.
Research Article: o Raw data must be accompanied by guidance notes, where relevant, to assist other scientists in replicating the analysis.
Research Article: o Authors should also upload any relevant analysis scripts and other experimental materials that would assist in replication.
There is no specific word limit for this section, but details of experiments that are peripheral to the main thrust of the article and that detract from the focus of the article should not be included.
Authors are also required to include the relevant structure reference numbers within the main text (e.g. the CCDC ID number), as well as the crystallographic information files (.cif format) as Supplementary Information, along with the checkCIF validation reports that can be obtained via the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr).

Study reporting guidelines

Authors should take care to maximize the accessibility and reusability of the data by selecting a file format from which data can be efficiently extracted (for example, spreadsheets or flat files should be provided rather than PDFs when providing tabulated data).

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What your package checks

Cover letter: requested

Declarations: Data availability, Funding, Ethics

Format: double spacing

Source transparency

This preparation guide uses published journal-specific author requirements. Journal instructions can change, so authors should complete a final review before submission.

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