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Accepted Manuscripts

Accept Decisions

There are two types of accept decisions: editorial accept and formal accept.

Editorial accept

Editorial acceptance means that the manuscript is provisionally accepted pending final checks for formatting and technical requirements. You will be notified of these requirements by email. See details of our final checks below.

The editorial acceptance date is the acceptance date that will appear on the published article.

Formal accept

Formal acceptance is issued when the final checks are complete. At this time, the manuscript will be sent to our production department.

Communication with authors

All communication about editorial accept decisions and final checks will be sent to the corresponding author. When the manuscript is formally accepted, all authors will be notified. All authors will also be notified when the article appears online.

Final Checks

When a manuscript is editorially accepted, it will go through a final round of checks to ensure the formatting and content meet our technical requirements. Some of the manuscript elements checked at this stage include:

  • Author names and affiliations
  • Funding statement
  • Competing interests statement
  • Data availability statement
  • Figure and table formatting
  • File names for figures, tables, and supporting information


You can expedite the progress of your manuscript during this stage by reviewing our submission guidelines beforehand and by responding promptly to our queries.

When you receive a decision of editorial accept, this will be your last opportunity to correct any errors in your manuscript. Please check your files very carefully, because you will not be able to check or change anything after this point. 

Peer Review History

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. The peer review history package includes the editorial decision letter for each revision, with reviews, and your responses to reviewer comments, including attachments. Read more about published peer review history.

Author Proof

You will receive an author proof before publication. This is an opportunity to ensure your manuscript is scientifically accurate. We will not be making copyedit changes at this stage.

When your proof is ready, you will receive an email to download it from the ProTrak production server. Please monitor your inbox for this message, which will be sent from noreply@apexcovantage.com. To ensure delivery, add noreply@apexcovantage.com to your address book. 

Early Version

PLOS Pathogens will publish an uncorrected page proof of your manuscript as an early version of your manuscript in advance of the final article at the same time that you receive your author proof. The date the early version is posted will be your article’s publication date. The final article, which will include any changes made during the proof stage, will be published to the same URL and have the same DOI. The early version will remain accessible to readers. If you do not want to have this early version published, you will have a chance to opt out.

Linking to Preprints

If you chose to forward your manuscript to bioRxiv or medRxiv for consideration for posting as a preprint and you received confirmation of its posting, then the preprint will automatically link to your article when it appears online. Read more about preprints at PLOS.

CrossMark

PLOS Journals participate in the CrossMark service, which is a multi-publisher initiative to provide a standard way for readers to locate the most up-to-date version of an article. By applying the CrossMark logo PLOS is committing to maintaining the content it publishes and to alerting readers to changes if and when they occur.

Clicking on the CrossMark logo will tell you the current status of a document and may also give you additional publication record information about the document.

Press and Media

Accepted manuscripts are under embargo until 2 p.m. Eastern Time, USA, on the date of publication. This is the time when the article becomes available online.

When is my manuscript considered “in press”?

A manuscript is considered “in press” when it has been formally accepted by the journal.

Every week, the journal will identify research to be featured in a press release. You may also choose to issue a press release yourself or through your institution. Read more about press releases.

Can I talk about my research before it’s published?

You may discuss your research prior to publication for scientific purposes only. This includes talking about your research at conferences and on preprint servers.

Please do not discuss your research with the press until after your manuscript has been accepted and assigned a publication date.

Indexing and Archiving

All published articles will be deposited in PubMed Central. Read about our other indexing and archiving services.

Reprints

All PLOS content is Open Access and you can print as many copies as you like for any purpose for free.