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Checklist for Revised Manuscripts for PLoS Medicine

Author Guidelines are available here. Figure Guidelines are available here.

Please check these guidelines!

The following list highlights the most common problems with revised papers.

1) For the response to reviewers, please ensure that:

Your revisions address the specific points made by each reviewer. In your rebuttal letter you should list your responses to all the reviewers’ and editors’ comments and the changes you have made to the manuscript. Please upload this as a REBUTTAL LETTER file.

We also ask authors to provide a marked-up copy of the changes made from the previous article file as a SUPPORTING INFORMATION file.

2) In the text:

Structure of the paper:

The ABSTRACT should be divided into the following four sections with these headings: Title, Background, Methods and Findings, and Conclusions. It should contain the all following elements, except for items in square brackets, which are only needed for some study types. Please use the same format for abstracts submitted as presubmission inquiries.

The Title should be a clear description of the paper’s content. The design must be present for randomised controlled trials or systematic reviews or meta-analyses and should be included for other study types if useful.
The Background section should describe clearly the rationale for the study being done. It should end with a statement of the specific study hypothesis and/or study objectives.
In Methods and Findings, describe the participants or what was studied (e.g. cell lines, patient group; be as specific as possible, including numbers studied). Describe the study design/intervention/main methods used/what was primarily being assessed, e.g. primary outcome measure and, if appropriate, over what period.
[If appropriate, include how many participants were assessed out of those enrolled, e.g. what was the response rate for a survey]
[If critical to the understanding of the paper, describe how results were analysed, i.e. which specific statistical tests were used]
For the main outcomes provide a numerical result if appropriate (it nearly always is) and a measure of its precision (e.g. 95% confidence interval).
Describe any adverse events or side effects.
Describe the main limitations of the study.
In Conclusions, provide a general interpretation of the results with any important recommendations for future research.

The end of the INTRODUCTION should include a brief statement of the intention of the paper (e.g. "We aimed to investigate the association of x with y").
Your DISCUSSION should start with a brief summary of your main findings. The discussion must include a section assessing the limitations of the study.

Other common issues:

You should use SI values throughout where applicable.
If you are reporting p values they should be exact unless less than 0.001. P values should never be reported in isolation but must be accompanied by the figures from which they are derived, along with a measure of error (e.g. mean and SD, or 95% CIs).
If you report relative risks, you must also report the associated absolute risk.
You must declare all funding sources and state what their role was in the paper. Our standard phrase is: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." If this statement is not correct you must amend as needed.

3) Please also ensure that the following production issues are complied with:

You have uploaded your ARTICLE file as an editable file (in a Word or RTF file). Instructions for converting LaTeX files into Word or RTF format can be found here: http://www.plosone.org/static/latex.action.
Major changes made in Word 2007, relative to earlier versions of Word, are incompatible with the established workflow processes of many publishers (e.g. the handling of mathematical equations). At this time we cannot accept for review or revision any documents created in Microsoft Office 2007, even if "saved down" to the 2003 version.
Any tables also need to be included within an editable article file or be submitted separately as an editable file (in a Word or Excel file). In Word, all tables must be made using the table function with their structure given by table cells (i.e., no tabs, no returns, no spaces).
You have uploaded any figures as separate FIGURE files. In most cases, at print size, resolution should be 600 dots-per-inch (dpi, which is roughly the same as ppi).
If any contributing authors have not replied to the previous email sent requesting their contributions and competing interests, they must do so now. We don’t make final decisions regarding publication until all of these statements have been received.
You have indicated your agreement to the PLoS open access license in the URL (if this included within the decision letter).
If we previously requested a striking image to accompany your article, please try to make one available or suggest an image from the paper that might be suitable. If your paper is accepted and the image is judged to be suitable by the editors, it may be featured on our Web site to highlight the article in the Table of Contents. Generally speaking this image should be 5cm in width with a resolution of 72 dpi.

If you have any questions or require any assistance, in the first instance please contact PLoSMedicine [at] plos.org rather than the editor.