PLOS ONE Acceptance Rate

2020-2023 data from PLOS's official journal information page, reported semi-annually.

Three forces drove the decline from 70% to 31%. First, PLOS ONE tightened its screening, data availability requirements became stricter, and editors got more aggressive about desk-rejecting incomplete submissions. Second, competition from Scientific Reports, Frontiers, and other mega-journals pulled away some well-matched submissions, leaving PLOS ONE with a higher proportion of cascade rejects from specialty journals. Third, submission volume from authors unfamiliar with the soundness-only model kept growing, increasing the mismatch rate. The journal didn't raise its standards, the submission pool changed around it.

By 2012-2015, PLOS ONE became the go-to destination for papers rejected from higher-tier journals. A paper rejected from Nature for "lack of novelty" often landed at PLOS ONE next. But "rejected from Nature for lack of novelty" doesn't always mean "methodologically sound." Sometimes a paper gets rejected from Nature because it's incremental AND has methods problems. PLOS ONE still rejects those. More authors submitting poorly matched submissions means more rejections, and that pattern has only intensified as submission volume has grown.

This is the most important thing to understand about PLOS ONE, and the most frequently misunderstood.

What reviewers are NOT asked:

• Is this finding novel?

• Is this likely to influence the field?

• Is this worth publishing in a journal with broad readership?

What reviewers ARE asked:

• Are the methods appropriate for the research question?

• Is the sample size justifiable?

• Do the conclusions follow from the data, without overclaiming?

• Is the data available for verification?

• Were appropriate ethical approvals obtained?

• Are the statistical analyses correct?

That last item is where a lot of papers fail. PLOS ONE reviewers catch statistical errors thoroughly, wrong test for the data type, missing correction for multiple comparisons, effect sizes reported without confidence intervals, overpowered conclusions from underpowered samples.

The soundness-only policy doesn't mean "lower bar." It means a different bar. A paper with impeccable methods and a boring result passes. A paper with an exciting result but inadequate controls fails.

What actually happens to 100 manuscripts submitted to PLOS ONE:

The biggest drop isn't peer review, it's the desk. One in four submissions never reaches a reviewer. Among papers that do reach review, roughly 41% (31 out of 75) ultimately get accepted. That's a much friendlier number than the headline 31%, and it's why getting past the desk is the single most important step.

PLOS ONE's overall 31% masks substantial variation:

These numbers are estimates based on submission patterns and editorial commentary. PLOS ONE doesn't publish field-specific acceptance rates.

Source: PLOS official journal information page, Jan-Jun 2023.

Budget 6-7 months from submission to having a citable publication. If your timeline is tighter (thesis deadline, grant milestone), consider that PLOS ONE's 45-day median to first decision is fast, but the full cycle including revisions is comparable to many specialty journals. The 10-day acceptance-to-publication is genuinely fast, once your paper is accepted, it's online quickly.

For the full breakdown of what affects your timeline, see the PLOS ONE editorial timing guide.

The most painful rejection is the third kind. You've invested 3-6 months, gone through revision, and still don't get accepted. This almost always happens because the revision response was superficial. The authors who survive revision are the ones who treat each reviewer comment as a genuine question that deserves a real answer, even when the reviewer is wrong.

Soundness-only review means reviewers can't reject your paper because they think the question is boring or the results are unsurprising. If the methods are sound and the conclusions match the data, the paper should be accepted. In practice:

• Papers with rigorous methods and modest results have a real home here

• Reviewers still request revisions (expect 1-2 rounds in most cases)

• The most common rejection reason is methodological weakness, not lack of novelty

• Statistical issues are the single fastest path to rejection

If your methods are bulletproof, your stats are appropriate, and your conclusions don't overreach, your acceptance probability is substantially higher than 31%. The bulk of rejections come from papers with technical problems that could have been caught before submission.

A PLOS ONE methods and stats check catches the statistical design and data-sharing gaps that reviewers flag in the majority of rejections, so you're not handing them the reason to say no.

For manuscripts targeting PLOS ONE, including hundreds of manuscripts being considered for soundness-first open-access journals through our PLOS ONE submission readiness check, we can put the 31% acceptance rate in sharper context.

The researchers who get accepted aren't doing anything exotic. They're doing the basics well: clean methods, appropriate statistics, conclusions that match their data, and data that's actually ready for public sharing. What separates the 31% who get in from the 69% who don't is almost always methodological rigor, not topic choice or scientific impact.

The most common rejection pattern we flag: papers where the statistical test doesn't match the study design. Chi-squared on continuous data. T-tests when the data isn't normally distributed. Missing corrections for multiple comparisons. At more selective journals, these papers get desk-rejected before anyone looks closely. At PLOS ONE, they reach peer review, and reviewers catch them. The soundness-only model means methodological issues are the entire editorial decision, there's no "but the finding is exciting enough to overlook the stats problems."

The second pattern: incomplete data availability. PLOS ONE enforces data sharing more strictly than almost any other journal. "Data available upon request" is not acceptable. You need a public repository with an accession number, or your raw data uploaded as supplementary files. We regularly flag manuscripts that are otherwise strong but haven't prepared their data package. This is a preventable desk rejection.

One insight from published editorial data that changes how you should read the 31% number: 77% of PLOS ONE reviewer reports comment on novelty or significance, despite the explicit policy not to evaluate those criteria. The editor is supposed to filter out those comments, but with 6,000+ volunteer academic editors of variable experience, enforcement is inconsistent. A well-prepared rebuttal letter that politely redirects reviewers to the soundness criteria can be the difference between acceptance and rejection.

If your paper has solid methods, conclusions that match your data, and proper ethics documentation, your submission is competing in a subset of that 31% pool, not the whole thing. Papers rejected for missing ethics statements, out-of-scope submissions, and obvious methods failures don't really represent your competition.

Submit if:

• Your methods are rigorous but your finding isn't a landmark discovery

• You have null results, negative findings, or a replication study that the scientific record needs

• Open access is required by your funder, and cost matters ($2,477 is competitive in this tier)

• Your paper was rejected from a higher-tier journal for "lack of novelty" with no criticism of your methods

• Your data is ready for public sharing and your methods section is detailed enough for independent replication

Think twice if:

• Your paper has unresolved methodological issues flagged in a previous rejection

• Your data isn't ready to share publicly, "available upon request" doesn't meet PLOS ONE's strict requirements

• Your institution's promotion criteria heavily weight prestige metrics; the PLOS ONE JIF page covers what those metrics mean for hiring committees

• You need a fast turnaround in a niche field, the 42-day median masks longer waits of 60-90 days when qualified reviewers are scarce

For the full submission process including what the editors actually check, see the PLOS ONE submission process guide.

For additional context, see the PLOS ONE JIF, PLOS ONE submission process, and Scientific Reports vs PLOS ONE guides.