PLOS ONE charges $2,477, accepts 26% of submissions, and returns a first decision in a median of 32 days.
Three features of the process are unusual enough that knowing them in advance changes what you do. PLOS ONE assesses methodological soundness rather than novelty. It issues two separate accept decisions, and formatting only matters between them. And it prices the fee on your submission date but bills it on acceptance — which is a gap of months, and which decides whether a fee-assistance application is still possible.
This page walks the sequence in order, with the numbers PLOS publishes about itself.
Key numbers before you submit to PLOS ONE
| Article processing charge | $2,477 for most articles — payable on acceptance, priced at the rate effective on your submission date |
| Acceptance rate | 26% (2025 metric year, PLOS) |
| Time to first decision | 32 days median (2025 metric year, PLOS) |
| Time to publication | 209 days median (2025 metric year, PLOS) |
| Reviewer turnaround | 10 days typical, after agreeing to review |
| Peer review model | Single-anonymized |
| Decision types | Reject · Major revision · Minor revision · Accept |
| Accept decisions | Two — provisional editorial accept, then formal accept |
| Articles published | 18,300 (2025 metric year) |
| Word limit | None |
| Figure limit | None |
| Licence | CC BY, authors retain copyright |
| eISSN | 1932-6203 |
| Manuscript file formats | DOC, DOCX or RTF; LaTeX submitted as PDF |
How to submit to PLOS ONE, step by step
Before you open the submission form, assemble these. Several of them are entered into the system rather than into your manuscript, and gathering them afterwards is what turns a twenty-minute submission into an afternoon:
- Manuscript file — DOC, DOCX or RTF, not locked or protected; double-spaced, single column, continuous line numbers, no footnotes, no more than three heading levels. LaTeX users upload a PDF instead, built from the PLOS template.
- Full title (250 characters) and short title (100 characters), both in sentence case. The short title is mandatory and easy to overlook.
- Abstract, 300 words maximum, no citations.
- Figures as separate files — not embedded in the manuscript PDF for LaTeX submissions. Formatting requirements are waived at this stage; see the timing note below.
- Cover letter, one page maximum, summarising the contribution, relating it to prior work, naming the article type, and suggesting Academic Editors. Do not put fee-waiver requests in it — PLOS states explicitly that these are entered separately in the submission system.
- Financial disclosure statement, entered in the submission form rather than in the manuscript. Worth preparing carefully: it "cannot be changed after initial submission without journal approval."
- Competing interests, also declared through the system rather than in the manuscript file.
- Confirmation about related manuscripts — that the work is not under consideration elsewhere, with copies of any related submissions.
- Optional: a Striking Image, cropped from a figure or supporting information file already in the submission.
Then the sequence runs:
- Initial checks. In-house staff screen for competing interests, compliance with editorial and ethical policies, financial disclosures and data availability. Submissions may be returned for changes at this stage — this is where desk rejection happens.
- Editorial review. The manuscript is assigned to an Academic Editor with relevant expertise, usually a member of the PLOS ONE Editorial Board, occasionally an invited Guest Editor. The editor assesses it against the publication criteria and decides whether external review is needed.
- Peer review. The handling editor invites reviewers. Reviewers who accept typically have 10 days. Review is single-anonymized: reviewers remain anonymous unless they choose to sign.
- Decision. One of Reject, Major revision, Minor revision or Accept, sent as a formal letter with reviewer feedback.
- Revision, if invited. Revised manuscripts usually go back to the original Academic Editor, who may decide directly or send them out again.
- Editorial accept — the first of two. PLOS states it plainly: "PLOS One uses two levels of accept decision. When the handling editor is satisfied with the scientific aspects of the manuscript they'll issue an editorial accept decision. This is a provisional acceptance, pending final checks for formatting and technical requirements."
- Formal accept. "Once the final requirements are fulfilled, the journal office will send a formal accept decision, and your manuscript will move on to production."
Why step 6 matters more than it looks. PLOS ONE "waives all formatting requirements until your manuscript has received a provisional Editorial Accept decision." So the science is judged on a manuscript that does not have to be formatted — and then every figure specification, file format and naming rule has to be satisfied in the window between the two accepts. Nothing is checked before it; everything is checked after it. The full specification is in PLOS ONE formatting requirements.
The work moves to the end, it does not disappear
Formatting is waived until editorial accept — then TIFF or EPS, 789–2250 px, Arial or Times at 8–12 pt, all at once.
Explore the ToolWhat happens after you upload: the timeline
For the 2025 metric year, PLOS publishes three medians for PLOS ONE:
| Median | |
|---|---|
| Time to first decision | 32 days |
| Time to publication | 209 days |
| Reviewer turnaround, once a reviewer agrees | 10 days |
Two things to hold alongside those numbers.
They are medians, and PLOS says the spread is real. The journal's own framing: "Journal timings vary by subject area and manuscript, we transparently display our timings below as a guide but please be advised this may not reflect our most up-to-date improvements." A 32-day median across 18,300 articles a year means half of all submissions take longer, and the tail is not short.
PLOS also publishes an older, more granular table, and it uses different definitions. The journal timings table on the PLOS ONE information page runs in half-year periods through January–June 2023, where it records a Time to First Editorial Decision of 17 days, a Time to First Decision of 45 days, Time to Acceptance of 188 days, Time to Publication of 204 days, and 10 days from acceptance to publication.
Do not read the 17 against the 32. "Time to First Editorial Decision (Rejection or Peer Review)" is the initial screen — the point at which your manuscript is either desk-rejected or sent out — while "Time to first decision" on the metrics page is the first decision proper. They are different measurements from different years, and averaging or comparing them produces a number that describes nothing.
The useful reading of the two together, and this is our reading rather than a PLOS statement: the 2023 table puts the initial screen at a median of 17 days, so budget around two to three weeks before you learn whether the paper is going out for review at all, and around a month to the first substantive decision on the current measure. The last leg is the short one — the 2023 table records a median of 10 days from acceptance to publication — because PLOS publishes continuously, "as often as daily", rather than in monthly issues.
What does each submission status actually mean?
The submission system shows a status while your manuscript moves through the process, and the wording is not self-explanatory. These are the definitions PLOS gives, verbatim:
| Status | What PLOS says it means |
|---|---|
| Manuscript submitted | "The journal has received the submission and is conducting an initial editorial assessment and screening for technical requirements." |
| Editor invited | "The journal office is identifying potential editors to handle the submission." |
| With editor | "The manuscript has been placed with a member of the editorial board for handling." |
| Under review | "The handling editor has invited peer reviewers to evaluate the submission." |
| Required reviews complete | "Some or all assigned reviewers have submitted comments." |
| Decision in process | "The handling editor has drafted a decision, but it has not yet been finalized or sent to the authors." |
Four things worth knowing that the table alone does not tell you:
"Decision in process" is the one people misread, and it is the most-searched of the six. It does not mean a decision is being made. It means one has already been drafted by the handling editor and is waiting to be finalised and sent. The outcome is decided; what remains is process. It is also the stage where emailing the editorial office achieves the least.
"Required reviews complete" can mean one review, not all of them. The definition says "some or all." A manuscript can sit at this status while the handling editor decides whether the reviews in hand are enough to act on or whether another reviewer is needed.
"Editor invited" moving slowly is a real bottleneck, not an error. Finding an Academic Editor with the right expertise across two hundred subject areas takes time. PLOS is candid that it can fail: "if we have been unable to secure a suitable Academic Editor or reviewers, we may withdraw the manuscript from the journal."
Neither accept decision appears in this list. The status vocabulary covers the route to a decision, not what follows it. The editorial accept and the formal accept arrive as letters.
One naming note, because it costs people search time: PLOS's author pages call it "our submission system" or "the online submission system" throughout. If you are looking for guidance under a platform brand name, you will not find it on the PLOS pages — the six statuses above are the journal's own vocabulary, and they are the ones your submission will display.
Acceptance rate and desk rejection at PLOS ONE
Two numbers get quoted here. They come from two different PLOS pages, cover different years, and are calculated differently — so they need to be used separately rather than combined.
26% — acceptance rate, 2025 metric year. From PLOS's metrics page, which states that "Acceptance rate is an average percentage" and that all figures on the page are for 2025. This is the current headline number.
30.82% — desk rejections without peer review, January–June 2023. From the journal timings table on the PLOS ONE information page. That table also records a 30.74% acceptance rate for the same period, calculated a different way: PLOS notes that "Acceptance rates are calculated from submission cohorts and are therefore only available with delay." The table runs through January–June 2023.
How to read them together. Roughly three in ten submissions were declined without review in the most recent period PLOS publishes a desk-rejection figure for, and roughly one in four submissions is accepted overall on the current annual measure. The gap between the 2023 cohort rate of 30.74% and the 2025 average of 26% is partly a real tightening and partly a difference in method — the two are not directly comparable, and PLOS does not publish a reconciliation.
What actually gets you desk-rejected here is not what gets you desk-rejected elsewhere. PLOS ONE's initial screen is about compliance and integrity, not importance: competing interests, ethical standards for human and animal studies, financial disclosures, data availability, reporting guidelines. Its publication criteria are seven, and they cover original research, no prior publication, high technical standard, conclusions supported by the data, intelligible standard English, research ethics, and reporting and data-availability standards. Novelty is not one of them. A paper is far more likely to be stopped at this journal for a missing data availability statement than for being unexciting.
If a "not novel enough" rejection is what brought you here, that is precisely the gap PLOS ONE was built to fill — and the metrics that follow from that policy are covered in PLOS ONE impact factor.
APC, open access, and waivers
PLOS ONE is fully open access under CC BY, with authors retaining copyright, funded by an article processing charge. There is no subscription option and no submission fee.
The published fees, by article type:
| Article type | Fee |
|---|---|
| All other articles (the standard research article rate) | $2,477 |
| Study Protocols | $2,477 |
| Registered Report Protocol | $1,852 |
| Lab Protocols | $1,536 |
| Registered Report Article | $1,088 |
When you pay, and which price applies, are two different dates. PLOS states both in one sentence: "Publication fees vary by journal and are payable upon article acceptance. Fees are subject to change and charged at the applicable rates effective on your submission date."
So the money is due at acceptance — potentially six or seven months after you submit — but the amount is locked at the rate in force when you submitted. Two practical consequences: a mid-review price rise does not reach you, and a budget built around the fee needs to survive until acceptance rather than being spent at submission.
Research4Life — the largest waiver route, and it is not a discount.
- Group A countries: "Publication in any PLOS journal is free for authors based at institutions located in a Research4Life Group A country who do not have external funding for their research study." Free, not reduced.
- Group B countries: authors with no external funding publish free in PLOS Biology, PLOS Medicine and PLOS Sustainability and Transformation; "For all other journals, the publication fee will be reduced to $940." PLOS ONE falls under that $940 rate.
- Eligibility is by the institution's country, and authors must indicate they require Research4Life assistance at the time of manuscript submission.
Publication Fee Assistance (PFA) — for everyone else who cannot pay.
- Apply at submission, or not at all. "Assistance must be formally applied for at submission. Requests made during the review process or after acceptance will not be considered." This is the single most consequential deadline in the fee system, and it falls at the point where authors are least likely to be thinking about money.
- Decisions take about ten days. "An author can apply for PFA when submitting an article for publication. A decision is usually sent to the author within 10 business days."
- It does not touch your editorial outcome. "Information about applications for fee assistance are not disclosed to journal editors or reviewers", and PLOS states that publication decisions are based solely on editorial criteria.
- Exhaust other funding first. The application form asks about alternative sources — the authors' institution, the institutional library, government agencies and funders — and funding disclosure information forms part of the review.
- The channel matters. You cannot apply by email or by asking an editor, and fee-waiver requests must not go in the cover letter.
Institutional routes, which are the ones people forget to check. PLOS states that "All PLOS journals provide APC-alternative models for institutions" — through Institutional Partners and Institutional Account Participants. If your university or funder has an agreement, the fee may already be covered and no application is needed. Check with your library before you budget for $2,477 — this takes one email and is the most likely reason to pay nothing.
One number to distrust. APC values for PLOS ONE circulate on third-party journal databases that have not been updated, some of them well below the published rate. The fee that binds you is the one on PLOS's own fees page on the day you submit, and the invoice arrives from PLOS at acceptance.
Pre-submission checklist
- Manuscript in DOC, DOCX or RTF, unlocked — or a PDF built from the PLOS LaTeX template
- Double-spaced, single column, continuous line numbers, no footnotes, maximum three heading levels
- Full title within 250 characters, sentence case; study design in the subtitle for trials, systematic reviews and meta-analyses
- Short title within 100 characters
- Abstract within 300 words, no citations
- References in Vancouver style
- Figures uploaded as separate files, cited in text as
Fig 1,Fig 2in ascending order; captions in the manuscript - Blot and gel papers: original uncropped images compiled into a single PDF named
S1_raw_images, 20 MB maximum - Data availability statement, and a repository DOI if data are deposited
- Financial disclosure statement drafted and ready to paste into the submission form — it cannot be changed later without approval
- Competing interests declared in full, including any patents or products in development
- Cover letter, one page, with no fee-waiver request in it
- Research4Life eligibility indicated, or a PFA application prepared — at submission, not later
- Institutional agreement checked with your library
- Optional: a Striking Image cropped from a figure already in the submission
Figures do not have to meet the specification yet, and building them to it anyway is the cheapest version of that work. Producing a scientific figure at 789–2250 pixels in Arial or Times at 8–12 point takes the same effort at the start as at the end, and it removes the one task that stands between an editorial accept and a formal accept. Generating figures as editable vector artwork keeps both the size and the type editable until you export.
Do the figure work once
Build to the PLOS ONE specification now and the gap between editorial accept and formal accept is a formality, not a rebuild.
Try FreeWhat the official pages don't answer
Four questions the guidance leaves open, and what to do about each.
How long is the gap between editorial accept and formal accept? PLOS does not publish a median for it, and it depends almost entirely on how much formatting work your files need. What PLOS does say is that "The more closely your figures adhere to these specifications, the more quickly your manuscript can be published once accepted." The historical 10 days from acceptance to publication suggests the checks themselves are fast, and the variable is you.
Is desk rejection still around 31%? The journal timings table stops at January–June 2023, and the current metrics page does not report desk rejection at all. Budget for a meaningful chance of rejection without review, and treat the compliance items — data availability, ethics approvals, financial disclosure — as the part of the submission most worth an extra hour.
How much do timings vary by discipline? PLOS says explicitly that "Journal timings vary by subject area and manuscript" but does not break the medians out by field. If you want a field-specific estimate, published PLOS ONE articles in your area carry received and accepted dates on the article page — a dozen of them gives you a better estimate for your discipline than any single median.
Which of the two accepts do you tell your institution about? Only the formal accept moves the manuscript to production. Treat the editorial accept as the scientific decision and the formal accept as the one that goes on a report, since only the second one guarantees publication.
What must you declare if AI helped prepare the submission?
Settle this before you write the Methods, because PLOS asks for a dedicated section rather than a sentence tucked into a caption or a cover letter.
One policy covers the whole submission — text, figures, data and supporting files alike. It requires that AI contributions be "clearly reported in a dedicated section of the Methods, or in the Acknowledgements section for article types lacking a Methods section," naming the tools, describing how you used them, stating how you evaluated the validity of their outputs, and identifying which parts of the work were affected.
Two boundaries are worth knowing at planning time. Fabricating or misrepresenting primary research data with AI is unacceptable regardless of disclosure. And noncompliance is handled as "misrepresentation of methods, contributions, and/or results" — with institutional notification, rejection, retraction or an editorial notice as the stated outcomes, which is a different category of problem from a formatting query.
The figure-specific reading of this policy, including what a usable disclosure sentence contains and where the line falls between conceptual illustrations and evidential imagery, is in PLOS ONE formatting requirements.
Frequently asked questions
Sources
Fees, timings, acceptance rate and process descriptions were read from PLOS's own pages. Reviewed 2026.
- PLOS ONE — Editorial and Peer Review Process — submission statuses, decision types, the two-level accept, review model and reviewer turnaround
- PLOS ONE — Submission Guidelines — manuscript formats, title and abstract limits, cover letter, financial disclosure, competing interests, Striking Image
- PLOS — Metrics — 2025 acceptance rate, time to first decision, time to publication and articles published
- PLOS ONE — Journal Information — publication criteria, scope, the journal timings table through January–June 2023, licence and indexing
- PLOS — Publication fees — fees by article type, payment and pricing dates, Research4Life, Publication Fee Assistance, institutional models
- PLOS ONE — Figures — the formatting waiver up to provisional editorial accept, and the blot and gel requirements
- PLOS ONE — Publishing Information — eISSN, founding year, continuous publishing schedule
See our editorial standards for how these guides are researched and corrected.
