Editorial and Peer Review Process

Each initial submission is assigned to a PLOS Medicine staff editor for an assessment of scope and quality.

The professional editor and Academic Editor will promptly assess the manuscript and will decide if it is likely to meet the requirement of providing a major advance in a particular field and describing a sufficient body of work to support that claim; if so, you’ll be invited to submit a Full Submission for Peer Review.

All articles, with the exception of Editorials and some Perspectives, are externally peer reviewed before a final decision is made about acceptance for publication. Expert reviewers are asked to assess the technical and scientific merits of the work. Where relevant, work presented in a manuscript undergoes a rigorous review of the statistical methods used.

PLOS Medicine uses single blind peer review. Reviewers remain anonymous unless they choose to identify themselves by signing their name to their review in our submission system.

In consultation together, the professional and Academic editors consider reviewer feedback and their own evaluations of the manuscript in order to reach a decision. The following decision types are available:

• Reject
• Major revision
• Minor revision
• Accept

If after peer review a manuscript is considered potentially appropriate for PLOS Medicine, a major revision is generally requested. A minor revision is generally requested as a final step before acceptance.

Manuscripts that are rejected generally do not fit the criteria outlined above in terms of originality, importance to the field, cross-disciplinary interest, or sound methodology.

Decisions are communicated to the corresponding author in a formal letter, along with reviewer feedback and any other requirements from the journal office.

If the editors feel that your manuscript has the potential to be published, but requires changes, you’ll be invited to revise it.

Revised manuscripts will be assessed by a professional editor and the same Academic Editor. Manuscripts that undergo major revision may require re-review or additional statistical review. There is no guarantee of acceptance after major revision.

Read more about revising your manuscripts

Once the final requirements are fulfilled, the journal office will send a formal accept decision, and your manuscript will move on to production.

Read more about accepted manuscripts.

PLOS offers accepted authors the opportunity to publish the peer review history of their manuscript alongside the final article. The peer review history package includes the complete editorial decision letter for each revision, with reviews, and your responses to reviewer comments, including attachments. If the peer reviewers have chosen to sign their reviews, their names will also appear.

If your submission is accepted for publication, you’ll be invited to opt-in to publish the peer review history of your manuscript using a form in our submission system.

Sharing peer review history enriches the scientific record, increases transparency and accountability, and helps to reinforce the validity of your research by displaying the thoroughness of the peer review process it has undergone.

The journal reserves the right not to publish peer review history in special cases, for example, due to an ethical consideration, such as the inclusion of information about a vulnerable population.

Authors can request that original research submissions (with referee reports, if relevant) rejected from one PLOS journal be transferred to another PLOS journal for further consideration there. Manuscripts will never be transferred between the journals without an author’s consent.

We trust that reviewers for any PLOS journal are willing to have their reviews considered by the editors of another PLOS journal.

Authors may submit a formal appeal to contest an editorial decision. Appeal requests must be made in writing to plosmedicine@plos.org with the word “appeal” in the subject line, and would preferably include a completed Appeal Request Form. We do not consider appeals by telephone or other informal means, and appeal requests should not be sent to the Editor(s)-in-Chief of the journal.

Appeals will only be considered under the following circumstances:

1. A reviewer or editor is thought to have made a significant factual error, or
2. A reviewer or editor’s objectivity may be compromised due to a documented competing interest, and
3. A reversal based on either of these grounds would change the original decision.

All appeal requests will be considered by at least one Staff Editor or Editorial Board member.

PLOS may decline an appeal without review if:

• integrity concerns contribute to a rejection decision, or
• the decision is connected to an issue involving multiple submissions or articles, or
• PLOS determines in its sole discretion that an appeal will be unable to satisfactorily resolve all issues underlying the editorial decision.

While under appeal, a manuscript remains under formal consideration at PLOS Medicine and should not be submitted for consideration elsewhere.

Decisions on appeals are final without exception.