PLOS Biology

Manuscript Guidelines

Please refer to this checklist before resubmitting your

article to ensure you have met all of PLOS Biology's
formatting requirements.

Please refer to this checklist before resubmitting your

Contents
article to ensure you have met all of PLOS Biology's
formatting requirements.
Submission Form ........................................................................................................ 2

Main Article File ......................................................................................................... 2

Please refer to this checklist before resubmitting your
article to ensure you have met all of PLOS Biology's
References................................................................................................................... 3
formatting requirements.

Figures, Tables, and Boxes ...................................................................................... 3

Please refer to this checklist before resubmitting your

Supporting Information ............................................................................................ 4
article to ensure you have met all of PLOS Biology's
formatting requirements.
Email: [email protected]

Please
Image Credits refer to this checklist before resubmitting your
article to ensure you have met all of PLOS Biology's
Page 1: Ian Sane. 10.1371/image.pbio.v13.i03
formatting requirements.
Page 2: Srivas Chennu. 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003887

Page 3: Adrienne Roeder. 10.1371/image.pbio.v08.i05

Page 4: Margaret McFall-Ngai 10.1371/image.pbio.v12.i02

Please refer to this checklist before resubmitting your

1 article to ensure you have met all of PLOS Biology's
formatting requirements.
 Submission Form

□ Please ensure the following sections in the submission form are written in full
sentences and include all requested information and standard text as
indicated. The following sections will typeset exactly as they appear in the
submission form:
o Competing Interests
o Data Availability
o Financial Disclosure:
▪ Include grant numbers and URLs as appropriate, and indicate
which author received the grant(s) using their initials.
o Author Contributions:
▪ For authors with the same initials please distinguish these using
the second letter of their last name (e.g. ABa, ABe).

Note: Co-authors will receive an email from the journal office requesting that they
confirm authorship of the paper – all authorship confirmations must be received
before a manuscript can be considered in press.

Main Article File

□ Manuscript files must be uploaded as either a .doc, .docx or .rtf file. LaTeX
submissions can be uploaded as PDFs as long as the associated TEX file is also
uploaded.

□ Please ensure that all authors have at least one affiliation listed on the title
page and that all listed affiliations are attributed to at least one author.

□ All author names need to match between the article file and our submission
form, including middle names and any special characters such as accents,
umlauts, etc.
Note: Any middle initials will also need to be included in the author
contributions.

□ All display equations need to be in an editable format using either Math Type
or Microsoft Equation. Do not insert equations as pictures.

□ Tables and boxes cannot contain images, and all main tables must be in an
editable grid format

□ The Acknowledgement section is meant only for statements of

gratitude or dedication as it relates specifically to the paper.
Please do not include any text relating to funding, data or
conflicts of interest and move any relevant information to
the appropriate section of the submission form. Please do
not thank reviewers or editors.

2
 □ PLOS does not publish any statements supported by “data not shown”
citations. Data will need to be provided for any instances of these citations, or
they will need to be removed from the manuscript.

References

□ All references included in the reference list must be cited within the main text,
in ascending numerical order upon first appearance.

□ Citations need to be within [square brackets] and separated by either

commas or dashes with no spaces, e.g. [1,2,3] or [1-3]

□ Please ensure that your reference list conforms to the PLOS style. See here for
guidelines and a downloadable EndNote style file.

Figures, Tables, and Boxes

□ All figures will be published under our CC BY licence. As such, any images not
produced by the authors will require specific confirmation from the creator(s)
that they allow their images to publish under this licence.

□ Ensure your figures meet our figure guidelines.

□ All main figures must be uploaded separately as either .tif or .eps files.

□ Main figures, tables, and boxes must be cited within the main body of the
manuscript in ascending numerical order.

□ Figure In-text citations must follow the format “Fig 1”, “Fig 2” verbatim,
including spelling, capitalization and without punctuation.
o Uploaded figures must use the following example format for files
names: Fig1.tif, Fig2.eps, etc.

□ Main figure legends are to be placed after the paragraph containing their
first in-text citation.
Note: Main tables and boxes must also be placed after their first in-text
citation, however all supporting information legends are to
be placed after the references.

3
 Supporting Information

Supporting Information files are not copyedited and will be published as they are
submitted. Therefore, please ensure that these files are legible and of high quality (at
least 300 dpi) in an easily accessible file format. For more information, see our
Supporting Information guidelines.

□ Any supporting information files that you intend to be published with the
manuscript should be uploaded as the “Supporting Information” file type.
“Other” or “Related Manuscript” file types are not published.

□ Uploaded supporting information must use the following example format for
files names:
o S1_Fig.tif, S1_Table.xlsx, S1_Text.doc, S1_Data.xlsx
Note: Each file type should be numbered starting at S1, then increasing
numerically for subsequent files of the same type (e.g. figures or data).

□ Within the main text of the manuscript, supporting information must be cited
using the following example format (including spelling and capitalization):
o S1 Fig, S1 Table, S1 Text, S1 Data, etc.

□ When citing supporting information within your main manuscript, please cite
specific files, e.g. “see S1 Text” rather than “see supplementary information”.

□ Each supporting file must have a corresponding legend. These should only be
included at the end of the manuscript, after the References section, and not
within any of the supporting files themselves.
Note: References included in these legends should be added to the
main reference list.

□ Each supporting information file is self-contained. Therefore, any references

cited within a supporting information file must be included in a self-contained
reference list within the same supporting file, starting at reference [1].
Note: Any references listed in a supporting information file will not be
indexed.