Submission Guidelines

Style and Format

Manuscript Organization

Most manuscripts should be organized as follows. Instructions for each element appear below.

• Title
• Authors
• Affiliations
• Abstract
• Author Summary
• Introduction
• Results
• Discussion
• Materials and Methods
• Acknowledgments
• References
• Supporting information captions

Uniformity in format facilitates the experience of readers and users of the journal. To provide flexibility, however, authors are also able to include the Materials and Methods section before the Results section or before the Discussion section. Please also note that the Results and Discussion can be combined into one Results/Discussion section.

Parts of a Submission

Title

Include a full title and a short title for the manuscript.

Titles should be written in sentence case (only the first word of the text, proper nouns, and genus names are capitalized). Avoid specialist abbreviations if possible. For clinical trials, systematic reviews, or meta-analyses, the subtitle should include the study design.

Author list

Author contributions

Provide at minimum one contribution for each author in the submission system. Use the CRediT taxonomy to describe each contribution. Read the policy and the full list of roles.

Contributions will be published with the final article, and they should accurately reflect contributions to the work. The submitting author is responsible for completing this information at submission, and we expect that all authors will have reviewed, discussed, and agreed to their individual contributions ahead of this time.

PLOS Complex Systems will contact all authors by email at submission to ensure that they are aware of the submission.

Cover letter

Upload a cover letter as a separate file in the online system.

The cover letter should address the following questions:

• Why is this manuscript suitable for publication in PLOS Complex Systems?
• Why will your study inspire other members of your field, and how will it drive research forward?

You may recommend a suitable Associate Editor to handle your submission; however, the editors reserve the right to contact an alternative—either from the board or a guest editor.

The cover letter will only be available to the editor and the journal staff.

Title page

The title, authors, and affiliations should all be included on a title page as the first page of the manuscript file.  

  Download our sample title, author list, and affiliations page (PDF)

Abstract

The Abstract comes after the title page in the manuscript file. The abstract text is also entered in a separate field in the submission system.  

The Abstract should be succinct; it must not exceed 300 words. Authors should mention the techniques used without going into methodological detail and should summarize the most important results.

While the Abstract is conceptually divided into three sections (Background, Methodology/Principal Findings, and Conclusions/Significance), do not apply these distinct headings to the Abstract within the article file.

Do not include any citations. Avoid specialist abbreviations.

Author Summary

We ask that all authors of research articles include a 150-200 word non-technical summary of the work as part of the manuscript to immediately follow the abstract. This text is subject to editorial change, should be written in the first-person voice, and should be distinct from the scientific abstract.

Aim to highlight where your work fits within a broader context; present the significance or possible implications of your work simply and objectively; and avoid the use of acronyms and complex terminology wherever possible. The goal is to make your findings accessible to a wide audience that includes both scientists and non-scientists.

Authors may benefit from consulting with a science writer or press officer to ensure they effectively communicate their findings to a general audience.

Introduction

The introduction should put the focus of the manuscript into a broader context. As you compose the Introduction, think of readers who are not experts in this field. 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. The Introduction should conclude with a brief statement of the overall aim of the experiments and a comment about whether that aim was achieved.

Results

The Results section should provide details of all of the experiments that are required to support the conclusions of the paper. 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. The section may be divided into subsections, each with a concise subheading. The section should be written in the past tense.

PLOS journals require authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. When submitting a manuscript online, authors must provide a Data Availability Statement describing compliance with PLOS's policy. 

Large data sets, including raw data, may be deposited in an appropriate public repository. See our list of recommended repositories.

For smaller data sets and certain data types, authors may provide their data within supporting information files accompanying the manuscript. 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).

For more information on how best to provide data, read our policy on data availability. PLOS does not accept references to “data not shown.”

Discussion

The Discussion should spell out the major conclusions of the work along with some explanation or speculation on the significance of these conclusions. How do the conclusions affect the existing assumptions and models in the field? How can future research build on these observations? What are the key experiments that must be done?

The Discussion should be concise and tightly argued.

The Results and Discussion may be combined into one section, if desired.

Materials and Methods

The Materials and Methods should provide enough detail to reproduce the findings. Submit detailed protocols for newer or less established methods. Well-established protocols may be referenced. 

Details of algorithms and protocol documents for clinical trials, observational studies, and other non-laboratory investigations may be uploaded as supporting information. These are not included in the typeset manuscript, but are downloadable and fully searchable from the HTML version of the article. Read the supporting information guidelines for formatting instructions.

We recommend and encourage you to deposit laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where protocols can be assigned their own persistent digital object identifiers (DOIs).

To include a link to a protocol in your article:

1. Describe your step-by-step protocol on protocols.io
2. Select Get DOI to issue your protocol a persistent digital object identifier (DOI) 
3. Include the DOI link in the Methods section of your manuscript using the following format provided by protocols.io: http://dx.doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.[PROTOCOL DOI]

At this stage, your protocol is only visible to those with the link. This allows editors and reviewers to consult your protocol when evaluating the manuscript. You can make your protocols public at any time by selecting Publish on the protocols.io site. Any referenced protocol(s) will automatically be made public when your article is published.

PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io articles. Read more information on Lab Protocol articles.

Consult our reporting guidelines, and include an ethics statement in the Materials and Methods section when reporting results from human subjects research and animal research.

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.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that anyone named in the Acknowledgments agrees to be named.

References

Any and all available works can be cited in the reference list. Acceptable sources include:

• Published or accepted manuscripts
• Manuscripts on preprint servers, providing the manuscript has a citable DOI or arXiv URL.

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”). Instead, include those data as supplementary material or deposit the data in a publicly available database.
• Personal communications (these should be supported by a letter from the relevant authors but not included in the reference list)
• Submitted research should not rely upon retracted research. You should avoid citing retracted articles unless you need to discuss retracted work to provide historical context for your submitted research. If it is necessary to discuss retracted work, state the article’s retracted status in your article’s text and reference list.

Ensure that your reference list includes full and current bibliography details for every cited work at the time of your article’s submission (and publication, if accepted). If cited work is corrected, retracted, or marked with an expression of concern before your article is published, and if you feel it is appropriate to cite the work even in light of the post-publication notice, include in your manuscript citations and full references for both the affected article and the post-publication notice. Email the journal office if you have questions.

References are listed at the end of the manuscript and numbered in the order that they appear in the text. In the text, cite the reference number in square brackets (e.g., “We used the techniques developed by our colleagues [19] to analyze the data”). PLOS uses the numbered citation (citation-sequence) method and first six authors, et al.

Do not include citations in abstracts. 

Make sure the parts of the manuscript are in the correct order before ordering the citations.

​Formatting references

PLOS uses the reference style outlined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), also referred to as the “Vancouver” style. Example formats are listed below. Additional examples are in the ICMJE sample references.

Journal name abbreviations should be those found in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) databases. 

Supporting information

Authors can submit essential supporting files and multimedia files along with their manuscripts. All supporting information will be subject to peer review. All file types can be submitted, but files must be smaller than 20 MB in size.

Authors may use almost any description as the item name for a supporting information file as long as it contains an “S” and number. For example, “S1 Appendix” and “S2 Appendix,” “S1 Table” and “S2 Table,” and so forth.  

Supporting information files are published exactly as provided, and are not copyedited.

Supporting information captions

List supporting information captions at the end of the manuscript file. Do not submit captions in a separate file.

The file number and name are required in a caption, and we highly recommend including a one-line title as well. You may also include a legend in your caption, but it is not required.

In-text citations

We recommend that you cite supporting information in the manuscript text, but this is not a requirement. If you cite supporting information in the text, citations do not need to be in numerical order.

Figures and Tables

Figure files

You can include figures in the main manuscript file at initial submission. If the manuscript reaches the revise stage, prepare and submit each figure as an individual file.

Cite figures in ascending numeric order at first appearance in the manuscript file.

Figure Captions

If you are submitting a new or revised manuscript, place captions in a group at the end of the manuscript file. 

After editorial acceptance, insert captions in read order in the manuscript text, immediately following the paragraph where the figure is first cited. Don’t include captions as part of the figure files themselves or submit them in a separate document.

At a minimum, include the following in your figure captions:

• A figure label with Arabic numerals, and “Figure” abbreviated to “Fig” (e.g. Fig 1, Fig 2, Fig 3, etc). Match the label of your figure with the name of the file uploaded at submission (e.g. a figure citation of “Fig 1” must refer to a figure file named “Fig1.tif”).
• A concise, descriptive title

The caption may also include a legend as needed.

Tables

Cite tables in ascending numeric order upon first appearance in the manuscript file.

Place each table in your manuscript file directly after the paragraph in which it is first cited (read order). Do not submit your tables in separate files.

Tables require a label (e.g., “Table 1”) and brief descriptive title to be placed above the table. Place legends, footnotes, and other text below the table. 

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.

Repositories may be either subject-specific (where these exist) and accept specific types of structured data, or generalist repositories that accept multiple data types. We recommend that authors select repositories appropriate to their field. 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. Authors are encouraged to select repositories that meet accepted criteria as trustworthy digital repositories, such as criteria of the Centre for Research Libraries or Data Seal of Approval. Large, international databases are more likely to persist than small, local ones.

To support data sharing and author compliance of the PLOS data policy, we have integrated our submission process with a select set of data repositories. The list is neither representative nor exhaustive of the suitable repositories available to authors. Current repository integration partners include Dryad and FlowRepository. Please contact [email protected] to make recommendations for further partnerships.

Instructions for PLOS submissions with data deposited in an integration partner repository:

• Deposit data in the integrated repository of choice.
• Once deposition is final and complete, the repository will provide you with a dataset DOI (provisional) and private URL for reviewers to gain access to the data.
• Enter the given data DOI into the full Data Availability Statement, which is requested in the Additional Information section of the PLOS submission form. Then provide the URL passcode in the Attach Files section.

If you have any questions, please email us.

Accession numbers

All appropriate data sets, images, and information should be deposited in an appropriate public repository. See our list of recommended repositories.

Accession numbers (and version numbers, if appropriate) should be 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.

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. In all other cases, these numbers must be provided at full submission.

Identifiers

As much as possible, please provide accession numbers or identifiers for all entities such as genes, proteins, mutants, diseases, etc., for which there is an entry in a public database, for example:

• Ensembl
• Entrez Gene
• FlyBase
• InterPro
• Mouse Genome Database (MGD)
• Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM)
• PubChem

Identifiers should be provided in parentheses after the entity on first use.

Striking image

You can upload a visually striking image alongside your submission, which we may use to showcase your article through PLOS’ online channels. The Editors-in-Chief choose the monthly issue image from the striking images submitted with articles scheduled for publication.

Submission Criteria

• Choose an image that represents the article in a striking and eye-catching way.
• It can be derived from a figure or supporting information file from the paper, and it may be a cropped portion of an image or the entire image.
• Alternatively, you can create or source an image, as long as it adheres to our CC BY license.
• High resolution: between 300-600 dpi
• Single panel
• Ideally avoid added details like text, scale bars, and arrows.

How to Submit

1. Submit your striking image to the submission system using the file type “Striking Image”.
2. Upload a separate file with corresponding caption.

If no striking image is uploaded, a member of the journal team will choose an appropriate image, which may be a figure from the submission or a separately sourced CC BY image.

Additional Information Requested at Submission

Financial Disclosure Statement

This information should describe sources of funding that have supported the work. If your manuscript is published, your statement will appear in the Funding section of the article.

Include your statement in the Financial Disclosure section of the initial submission form.

The statement should include:

• Specific grant numbers
• Initials of authors who received each award
• URLs to sponsors’ websites

Also state whether any sponsors or funders (other than the named authors) played any role in:

• Study design
• Data collection and analysis
• Decision to publish
• Preparation of the manuscript

If they had no role in the research, include this sentence: “The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”

If the study was unfunded, include this sentence as the Financial Disclosure statement: “The author(s) received no specific funding for this work."

Competing interests

The corresponding author is asked at submission to declare, on behalf of all authors, whether there are any financial, personal, or professional interests that could be construed to have influenced the work.

Any relevant competing interests of authors must be available to editors and reviewers during the review process and will be stated in published articles.

Related manuscripts

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. 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. Reviewers will be asked to comment on the overlap between related submissions.

Preprints

PLOS encourages authors to post preprints to accelerate the dissemination of research. Posting a manuscript on a preprint server does not impact consideration of the manuscript at any PLOS journal.

Authors posting on bioRxiv can choose to concurrently submit their manuscripts to relevant PLOS journals through the direct transfer service.

Reviewer and editor suggestions

We ask authors to suggest suitable editors and at least four potential reviewers when submitting their manuscript. Bear in mind any potential competing interests when making these suggestions. It is not appropriate to suggest recent collaborators or other researchers at your institution. See our policy on competing interests for more information. 

Opposed reviewers

Authors may choose to request that an individual is excluded from the review process and not involved in their manuscript. When making these suggestions, please provide specific reasons why each person should not review your submission in each “Reason” box. The editorial team will respect these requests so long as this does not interfere with the objective and thorough assessment of the submission.

Guidelines for Specific Study Types

Study design, reporting, and analyses are assessed against all relevant research and methodological technique standards held by the community. Guidelines for specific study types are outlined below.

Human subjects research

Manuscripts should conform to the following reporting guidelines:

• Studies of diagnostic accuracy: STARD
• Observational studies: STROBE
• Microarray experiments: MIAME
• Other types of health-related research: Consult the EQUATOR web site for appropriate reporting guidelines

Methods sections of papers on research using human subjects or samples must include ethics statements that specify:

• The name of the approving institutional review board or equivalent committee(s). If approval was not obtained, the authors must provide a detailed statement explaining why it was not needed
• Whether informed consent was written or oral. If informed consent was oral, it must be stated in the manuscript:
  • Why written consent could not be obtained
  • That the Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved use of oral consent
  • How oral consent was documented

For studies involving humans categorized by race/ethnicity, age, disease/disabilities, religion, sex/gender, sexual orientation, or other socially constructed groupings, authors should:

• Explicitly describe their methods of categorizing human populations
• Define categories in as much detail as the study protocol allows
• Justify their choices of definitions and categories, including for example whether any rules of human categorization were required by their funding agency
• Explain whether (and if so, how) they controlled for confounding variables such as socioeconomic status, nutrition, environmental exposures, or similar factors in their analysis

In addition, outmoded terms and potentially stigmatizing labels should be changed to more current, acceptable terminology. Examples: “Caucasian” should be changed to “white” or “of [Western] European descent” (as appropriate); “cancer victims” should be changed to “patients with cancer.”

For papers that include identifying, or potentially identifying, information, authors must download the Consent Form for Publication in a PLOS Journal, which the individual, parent, or guardian must sign once they have read the paper and been informed about the terms of PLOS open-access license. The signed consent form should not be submitted with the manuscript, but authors should securely file it in the individual's case notes and the methods section of the manuscript should explicitly state that consent authorization for publication is on file, using wording like:

The individual in this manuscript has given written informed consent (as outlined in PLOS consent form) to publish these case details.

For more information about PLOS Complex Systems policies regarding human subjects research, see the Publication Criteria and Editorial Policies.

Manuscripts describing observational clinical studies are subject to all policies regarding human research and community standards for reporting observational research as outlined by the STROBE statement. Furthermore, authors submitting work of this nature should pay special attention to the following requirements:

• If the submitted manuscript is very similar to previous work, authors must provide a sound scientific rationale for the submitted work and clearly reference and discuss the existing literature.
• The sampling strategy and eligibility criteria of enrolled subjects should be described in sufficient detail.
• Sample size calculations should be justified with relevant inputs defined.
• Independent and dependent variables considered for statistical analysis should be clearly defined and justified.
• The validity and reliability testing of self-developed data collection tools should be reported.
• Conclusions should be appropriate for the study design, with indications on how the study results will contribute to the base of academic knowledge.

Clinical trials

Clinical trials are subject to all policies regarding human research. PLOS Complex Systems follows the World Health Organization's (WHO) definition of a clinical trial:

All clinical trials must be registered in one of the publicly-accessible registries approved by the WHO or ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors). Authors must provide the trial registration number. Prior disclosure of results on a clinical trial registry site will not affect consideration for publication. We reserve the right to inform authors' institutions or ethics committees, and to reject the manuscript, if we become aware of unregistered trials.

PLOS Complex Systems supports prospective trial registration (i.e. before participant recruitment has begun) as recommended by the ICMJE's clinical trial registration policy. Where trials were not publicly registered before participant recruitment began, authors must:

• Register all related clinical trials and confirm they have done so in the Methods section
• Explain in the Methods the reason for failing to register before participant recruitment

Clinical trials must be reported according to the relevant reporting guidelines, i.e. CONSORT for randomized controlled trials, TREND for non-randomized trials, and other specialized guidelines as appropriate. The intervention should be described according to the requirements of the TIDieR checklist and guide. Submissions must also include the study protocol as supporting information, which will be published with the manuscript if accepted.

Authors of manuscripts describing the results of clinical trials must adhere to the CONSORT reporting guidelines appropriate to their trial design, available on the CONSORT Statement web site. Before the paper can enter peer review, authors must:

• The name of the registry and the registration number must be included in the Abstract.
• Provide a copy of the trial protocol as approved by the ethics committee and a completed CONSORT checklist as supporting information (which will be published alongside the paper, if accepted). This should be named S1 CONSORT Checklist.
• Include the CONSORT flow diagram as the manuscript's “Fig 1”

Any deviation from the trial protocol must be explained in the paper. Authors must explicitly discuss informed consent in their paper, and we reserve the right to ask for a copy of the patient consent form.

The name of the registry and the registry number must be provided in the Abstract. If the trial is registered in more than one location, please provide all relevant registry names and numbers.

Animal research

Manuscripts reporting animal research must state in the Methods section:

• The full name of the relevant ethics committee that approved the work, and the associated permit number(s).
• Where ethical approval is not required, the manuscript should include a clear statement of this and the reason why. Provide any relevant regulations under which the study is exempt from the requirement for approval.
• Relevant details of steps taken to ameliorate animal suffering.

Authors should always state the organism(s) studied in the Abstract. Where the study may be confused as pertaining to clinical research, authors should also state the animal model in the title.

To maximize reproducibility and potential for re-use of data, we encourage authors to follow the Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines for all submissions describing laboratory-based animal research and to upload a completed ARRIVE Guidelines Checklist to be published as supporting information.

Non-human primates

Manuscripts describing research involving non-human primates must report details of husbandry and animal welfare in accordance with the recommendations of the Weatherall report, The use of non-human primates in research, including:

• Information about housing, feeding, and environmental enrichment.
• Steps taken to minimize suffering, including use of anesthesia and method of sacrifice, if appropriate.

Random source animals

Manuscripts describing studies that use random source (e.g. Class B dealer-sourced in the USA), shelter, or stray animals will be subject to additional scrutiny and may be rejected if sufficient ethical and scientific justification for the study design is lacking.

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses

A systematic review paper, as defined by The Cochrane Collaboration, is a review of a clearly formulated question that uses explicit, systematic methods to identify, select, and critically appraise relevant research, and to collect and analyze data from the studies that are included in the review. These reviews differ substantially from narrative-based reviews or synthesis articles. Statistical methods (meta-analysis) may or may not be used to analyze and summarize the results of the included studies.

Reports of systematic reviews and meta-analyses should include a completed PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) checklist and flow diagram to accompany the main text. Blank templates are available here:

• Checklist: PDF or Word document
• Flow diagram: PDF or Word document

Authors must also state in their “Methods” section whether a protocol exists for their systematic review, and if so, provide a copy of the protocol as supporting information and provide the registry number in the abstract.

If your article is a systematic review or a meta-analysis you should:

• State this in your cover letter
• Select “Research Article” as your article type when submitting
• Include the PRISMA flow diagram as Fig 1 (required where applicable)
• Include the PRISMA checklist as supporting information

Personal data from third-party sources

For all studies using personal data from internet-based and other third-party sources (e.g., social media, blogs, other internet sources, mobile phone companies), data must be collected and used according to company/website Terms and Conditions, with appropriate permissions. All data sources must be acknowledged clearly in the Materials and Methods section.

In the Ethics Statement, authors should declare any potential risks to individuals or individual privacy, or affirm that in their assessment, the study posed no such risks. In addition, the following Ethics and Data Protection requirements must be met.

For interventional studies, which impact participants’ experiences or data, the study design must have been prospectively approved by an Ethics Committee, and informed consent is required. The Ethics Committee may waive the requirement for approval and/or consent.

For observational studies in which personal experiences and accounts are not manipulated, consultation with an Ethics or Data Protection Committee is recommended. Additional requirements apply in the following circumstances:

• If information used could threaten personal privacy or damage the reputation of individuals whose data are used, an Ethics Committee should be consulted and informed consent obtained or specifically addressed.
• If authors accessed any personal identifying information, an Ethics or Data Protection Committee should oversee data anonymization. If data were anonymized and/or aggregated before access and analysis, informed consent is generally not required.

Cell lines

Authors reporting research using cell lines should state when and where they obtained the cells, giving the date and the name of the researcher, cell line repository, or commercial source (company) who provided the cells, as appropriate.

Authors must also include the following information for each cell line:

For de novo (new) cell lines, including those given to the researchers as a gift, authors must follow our policies for human subjects research or animal research, as appropriate. The ethics statement must include:

• Details of institutional review board or ethics committee approval; AND
• For human cells, confirmation of written informed consent from the donor, guardian, or next of kin

For established cell lines, the Methods section should include:

• A reference to the published article that first described the cell line; AND/OR
• The cell line repository or company the cell line was obtained from, the catalogue number, and whether the cell line was obtained directly from the repository/company or from another laboratory

Authors should check established cell lines using the ICLAC Database of Cross-contaminated or Misidentified Cell Lines to confirm they are not misidentified or contaminated. Cell line authentication is recommended – e.g., by karyotyping, isozyme analysis, or short tandem repeats (STR) analysis – and may be required during peer review or after publication.

Antibodies

Manuscripts reporting experiments using antibodies should include the following information:

• The name of each antibody, a description of whether it is monoclonal or polyclonal, and the host species.
• The commercial supplier or source laboratory.
• The catalogue or clone number and, if known, the batch number.
• The antigen(s) used to raise the antibody.
• For established antibodies, a stable public identifier from the Antibody Registry.

The manuscript should also report the following experimental details:

• The final antibody concentration or dilution.
• A reference to the validation study if the antibody was previously validated. If not, provide details of how the authors validated the antibody for the applications and species used. 

Methods, software, databases, and tools

PLOS Complex Systems will consider submissions that present new methods, software, databases, or tools as the primary focus of the manuscript if they meet the following criteria:

Software submissions

Manuscripts whose primary purpose is the description of new software must provide full details of the algorithms designed. Describe any dependencies on commercial products or operating system. Include details of the supplied test data and explain how to install and run the software. A brief description of enhancements made in the major releases of the software may also be given. Authors should provide a direct link to the deposited software from within the paper.

Database submissions

For descriptions of databases, provide details about how the data were curated, as well as plans for long-term database maintenance, growth, and stability. Authors should provide a direct link to the database hosting site from within the paper.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research studies use non-quantitative methods to address a defined research question that may not be accessible by quantitative methods, such as people's interpretations, experiences, and perspectives. The analysis methods are explicit, systematic, and reproducible, but the results do not involve numerical values or use statistics. Examples of qualitative data sources include, but are not limited to, interviews, text documents, audio/video recordings, and free-form answers to questionnaires and surveys.

Qualitative research studies should be reported in accordance to the Consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ) checklist or Standards for reporting qualitative research (SRQR) checklist. Further reporting guidelines can be found in the Equator Network's Guidelines for reporting qualitative research.

Other Article Types

If you are submitting content other than a research article, learn more about what we publish.

You may be eligible for APC support

Many institutional partners globally have publishing agreements with PLOS to allow their corresponding authors to publish with reduced or no APCs. To determine if your corresponding author is eligible, please visit our institutional partners page to determine what kind of agreement your institution has with PLOS.

If your corresponding author is affiliated with a participating institution, they must follow the instructions below to demonstrate eligibility.

If your corresponding author is not from a participating institution and requires assistance paying publishing fees, please consider applying for a fee waiver at submission.