Submission Guidelines

About the Journal

PLOS Genetics publishes original research that clearly demonstrates novelty, importance to a particular field, biological significance, and conclusions that are justified by the study.

Our aim is to make the editorial process rigorous and consistent, and to offer the best possible support to our authors throughout this process. Authors are encouraged to decide how best to present their ideas, results, and conclusions, but all research should be presented in a form that is readable to those in the field, easily understood by scientists outside of the immediate discipline, and comprehensible to readers whose first language is not English. The writing style should therefore be concise and accessible. Care should be taken to define abbreviations clearly and to use correct genetic and systematic nomenclature.

We strongly encourage authors to seek input from their co-authors and colleagues with different expertise when preparing their manuscript for submission to ensure that the style of writing, clarity of meaning, and spelling, punctuation, and grammar are at a very high level. A variety of style and writing guides are available, including The Elements of Style (New York: bartleby.com, 1999) and the Manuscript Preparation recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Editors and/or reviewers may also make suggestions for how to achieve optimal quality and clarity of presentation, as well as potential cuts or additions that could strengthen the manuscript.

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 (also called Methods or Models)
• 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 clarify the reasons for including your Materials and Methods section before the Results or Discussion sections in your cover letter when submitting your manuscript files.

Please also note that the Results and Discussion can be combined into one Results/Discussion section.

Manuscripts submitted as Methods articles may be organized as follows:

• Title
• Authors
• Affiliations
• Abstract
• Author Summary
• Introduction
• Description of the Method
• Verification and Comparison
• Applications
• Discussion
• Acknowledgements
• References
• Supporting Information captions

To use this alternative structure, please choose ‘Methods’ when selecting an article type during the submission process.

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 Genetics 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 Genetics?
• 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, embed figure captions within the manuscript text after their first mention, or group together at the end of the manuscript.

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.

Data presentation in graphs 

To better illustrate your results and to improve the reader's understanding and interpretation of your data, we discourage the use of bar graphs and line plots for continuous data, particularly for studies with small sample sizes (n≤9 independent observations per group).

• We recommend that continuous data is presented in such a way that the reader can evaluate the distribution of the individual data points. Scatterplots, boxplots, and histograms are more informative than bar or line charts.

• 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. 

• Paired or non-independent data should be presented to include information about whether changes are consistent across individuals.

• 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.

• All numerical values used to generate graphs must be provided as per the PLOS Data Availability policy.

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 data@plos.org 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.

Research Resource Identifiers

Research Resource Identifiers are unique Resource Identifiers (RRIDs) for citing resources used in the research. We encourage authors to use RRIDs within the text of their papers to identify their model organisms, antibodies, or tools.

PLOS is a part of the Research Resource Identification Initiative (#RII), a cross-publisher effort to enable effective tracking of the utilization of particular research resources across all biomedical literature and promote reproducibility in science. RRIDs are found via the RRID portal.

If an RRID does not exist, you may create a new one as needed through the RRID Portal. The Research Resource Citation guidelines provide instructions on how to cite the resource in the manuscript.

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. All novel structures must have been deposited in a community endorsed database prior to submission (please see our list of recommended repositories).

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. 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).

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. Authors must include the structure reference numbers within the main text and submit as Supplementary Information the official validation reports from these databases.

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 and support authors who wish to share their work early and receive feedback before formal peer review. Deposition of manuscripts with preprint servers does not impact consideration of the manuscript at any PLOS journal.

Authors posting on bioRxiv may submit direclty to PLOS journals through bioRxiv’s direct transfer to journal service.

Authors submitting manuscripts in the life science to PLOS Genetics may opt-in to post their work on bioRxiv during the PLOS Genetics initial submission process.

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.

Selecting a Section

Authors are required to select a section upon submission to PLOS Genetics. This information is used to assign the relevant Section Editor who can best evaluate each manuscript. Choose one of the following sections that most closely applies (listed topics are not exhaustive).

Cancer Genetics

• Genomic and/or epigenomic analyses in humans or model organisms that provide insight into cancer pathogenesis and/or approaches to therapy 
• Identification of heritable cancer-susceptibility genes and variants
• Genome stability/DNA damage analyses relevant to understanding mechanisms of tumorigenesis
• Cellular/molecular studies that expand understanding of cancer-related signaling pathways

Cellular and Developmental Genetics

• Topics related to genetic and genomic systems at the cellular, subcellular, and molecular levels, including cellular signaling pathways, the genetic mechanisms underlying embryonic development, and the role of transcription factors, epigenetic modifications, and non-coding RNAs in controlling cell fate decisions and tissue differentiation

Epigenetics

• Regulatory mechanisms controlling genome functions in normal development and in disease
• The interaction of DNA sequence variability with genome regulation
• The molecular and cellular mechanisms mediating the memory of past events

Gene Expression and Regulation

• Topics related to control and regulation of gene expression and regulation, including DNA repair and integrity, mRNA stability and processing, and transcriptional and translational regulation

Genomics and Systems Biology

• Topics related to genome structure and regulation, functional genomics, and the integration of genomic, genetic, and signaling systems at all scales
• Please also review other sections, including ‘Population and Evolutionary Genetics’ and ‘Human Genetic Variation and Disease’ to select the most suitable section for your submission

Microbial Genetics

• Genetic approaches that provide insights of broad significance into the biology of bacteria, archaea, or phages, yeasts and fungi
• Phenotypic and molecular variation including gene expression, motility, cell cycle regulation, chromosome structure and function, metabolism, biofilm formation, cell signalling
• Genome evolution, comparative genomics, metagenomic and microbiome analyses, with functional studies that provide mechanistic insights

Methods

• Computational (“dry bench”) methods and/or molecular genetics (“wet bench”)
• The methodological advance should be substantial and the new method should be important and likely to be adopted by many researchers
• Description of the method must be accompanied by its validation in controlled settings (e.g. simulations) and performance comparisons with existing relevant methods
• Application to an important genetics question and related biological discovery to prove the usefulness of the method is encouraged but not required
• Manuscript organization may be submitted as Methods articles, with a distinct organization to promote accessibility and utility of the method

Human Genetic Variation and Disease

• Genome-wide and Phenome-wide association studies (GWAS and PheWAS) that provide new insights on the genetic architecture of human complex traits and diseases
• Studies of humans, model organisms, or pathogenic organisms that provide insight into genotype-phenotype relationships at a molecular, organismal, and/or population level
• Functional characterization that elucidates novel mechanisms underlying genotype-phenotype association; experimental studies of genetic pathophysiology for human phenotypes
• Characterization of genetic variation in natural populations of humans and human pathogens, which shed light on the history or phenotypic variation of the population
• Statistical, computational or bioinformatic methods that have broad application in studying human genetics
• Particular interest in human studies that include diverse study groups or focus on understudied populations

Plant Genetics

• Genetic approaches that provide insights of broad signifcance into the biology of plants
• Studies of plant evolution and natural variation and the genetics of agricultural traits
• Genomic and epigenomic analyses that provide mechanistic insight into the molecular processes that mediate plant reproduction, development and responses to environment

Population and Evolutionary Genetics

• Studies of molecular or experimental evolution in any organism or system
• Theoretical and/or computational approaches that represent a broad advance in understanding evolutionary dynamics and/or mechanisms
• Genetic and/or genomic whole organism studies that provide insight into adaptation or speciation

Other Article Types

If you are submitting content other than a research article, read the guidelines for other article types.

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.