PLOS ONE 'Under Review': What Each Status Means and When to Expect a Decision

Before the paper reaches external reviewers, journal staff and the in-house editorial team run the initial checks and an Academic Editor evaluates the manuscript against the 7 publication criteria. PLOS reports 30.82% of submissions rejected without peer review for January to June 2023, and 21.4% to 23.0% in each half-year from 2020 through 2022.

A rejection most often means the editor concluded that the work has technical issues (incomplete data, missing methods, ethical concerns) or would fit better at a sister PLOS journal (PLOS Biology for high-impact biology, PLOS Medicine for general-medicine, PLOS Global Public Health for global health, PLOS Digital Health for digital health, PLOS Computational Biology for computational biology).

• Initial technical check (PLOS does not publish a duration): Journal staff and the in-house editorial team check for potential issues such as competing interests, compliance with editorial policies and ethical standards, financial disclosures, and data availability. Submissions may be returned to authors for changes or clarifications at this stage. Reporting checklists where applicable (CONSORT for clinical trials, PRISMA for systematic reviews, STROBE for observational studies, ARRIVE encouraged for animal work), ethics statements, and the data-availability statement (PLOS requires public deposition of data unless a legal or ethical restriction applies) are what these checks look for.

• Editor assignment: The journal office identifies potential editors, and each new submission is assigned to an Academic Editor with relevant expertise, usually a member of the Editorial Board and occasionally a Guest Editor.

• Academic Editor review: Papers that pass the initial checks are reviewed by the Academic Editor against the publication criteria, and the editor determines whether reviews from additional experts are needed.

• External reviewer recruitment: The handling editor selects reviewers based on expertise, publication history, and past reviews, and invites them to provide feedback. PLOS does not publish a recruitment time.

• Active peer review: After agreeing to review, external reviewers typically have 10 days to submit their review, and the journal office follows up with late reviewers. PLOS's median time to first decision was 45 days for January to June 2023 and 32 days for 2025. Reviewers evaluate the manuscript against the 7 publication criteria, paying particular attention to whether the conclusions are supported by the data provided.

• Editorial synthesis and decision: After reports return, the Academic Editor synthesizes them and decides whether to accept the work as is, request minor or major revisions, or reject the paper.

• Rejection within 1 to 3 days: Administrative issue or immediate scope mismatch.

• Rejection within 3 to 14 days: Journal staff or Academic Editor desk rejection, consistent with the 30.82% rejected-without-peer-review figure PLOS reports for January to June 2023.

• Still Under Review after 2 weeks: Strong signal. Paper passed the in-house technical check and Academic Editor screen.

• Still Under Review after 8 weeks: Reviewer-recruitment or reviewer-report delay. A polite inquiry to the journal office at plosone@plos.org is appropriate.

• Status changes to "Decision in process": The handling editor has drafted a decision that has not yet been finalized or sent to you; PLOS does not publish how long this takes.

This is the most common anxiety we hear from PLOS ONE authors during the active editorial window. The honest answer: no, 4 weeks at Under Review is within PLOS ONE's median first-decision time (32 days for 2025, 45 days for January to June 2023). Reports may already be in editorial synthesis with the Academic Editor preparing the recommendation. Most reviewer-driven delays come from reviewer-recruitment timing for the criteria-based review model rather than slow reviews.

If the portal still says Under Review at the 6-week mark, one possible explanation is a late reviewer; PLOS says the journal office follows up with late reviewers and keeps authors informed if there are any delays.

What you should NOT do during the 4-to-6-week window is email the editorial office. PLOS ONE Academic Editors are working academics managing manuscripts around their own research; an inquiry at 4 weeks adds friction without accelerating the timeline.

If your PLOS ONE paper is rejected after review, the natural cascade depends on what the reviewers and Academic Editor cited:

Scientific Reports is the natural external Nature Portfolio open-access cascade for technically-sound multidisciplinary papers. Scientific Reports uses the Nature submission portal at Nature manuscript-tracking system; editorial contact srep@nature.com.

PLOS Global Public Health is the PLOS cascade for global-health papers.

PLOS Digital Health is the PLOS cascade for digital-health and AI-clinical-research papers.

PLOS Computational Biology is the PLOS cascade for computational biology papers.

PLOS Genetics is the PLOS cascade for genetics-focused papers.

BMC Research Notes is the BMC short-format cascade. BMC uses Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager submission portal; editorial contact bmcresnotes@biomedcentral.com.

Heliyon is the external Elsevier multidisciplinary cascade for technically-sound papers. Heliyon uses Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager submission portal; editorial contact heliyon@elsevier.com.

PLOS asks reviewers at PLOS ONE to assess the seven publication criteria. The table below maps four of the main themes to actionable preparation.

In our pre-submission work with PLOS ONE-targeted manuscripts, three named patterns generate the most consistent reviewer concerns and the most common reasons papers miss the editorial bar or fail the desk screen.

Data-availability gaps flagged at initial technical check. When raw data is not deposited in public repositories, initial technical check return is common. The strongest manuscripts deposit raw data alongside submission and make the data-availability statement match the figure, table, supplement, software, and protocol package reviewers will inspect.

Check whether your PLOS ONE data package is complete →

Conclusions exceeding data support flagged by Academic Editor. When conclusions exceed what the data clearly support, especially causal claims from observational data or generalization claims from limited samples, Academic Editors consistently flag concerns per the 7 publication criteria. The strongest manuscripts make conservative conclusions that trace directly from the results tables, statistical model, limitations paragraph, and data-availability statement.

Check whether your conclusions stay inside the data →

Reporting checklist gaps surface as reviewer requests. When ARRIVE, CONSORT, STROBE, PRISMA, or field-specific reporting checklists are incomplete, reviewers consistently request expanded reporting sections. The strongest manuscripts complete the relevant checklist before submission and make each checklist item traceable to the methods, results, supplement, and data repository.

Check your PLOS ONE reporting-checklist traceability →

We have reviewed 50+ manuscripts targeting PLOS ONE, Scientific Reports, Heliyon, BMC Research Notes, PLOS Biology, and PLOS Medicine. This guide tells you what PLOS ONE editors look for in the status window, while the review tells you whether your paper passes the same data-availability, methods, ethics, reporting-checklist, and conclusion-support checks before the Academic Editor or external reviewers see it. Full Manusights reviews include a 60-day money-back guarantee, and we do not train models on your manuscript.

In our pre-submission review work across multidisciplinary open-access and scientific-soundness journals, PLOS ONE-bound drafts most often failed when the study was publishable in principle but the evidence package was not transparent enough for criteria-based review. We see this recurring failure pattern because PLOS ONE does not require novelty, but it does require data, methods, ethics, and conclusions to line up cleanly.

Source limitation: official guidance explains PLOS ONE's criteria and manuscript statuses, but it cannot diagnose whether your specific data repository, reporting checklist, and conclusion language are ready for Academic Editor review.

This page was created from PLOS's public PLOS ONE editorial and peer review process documentation at Journals editorial team page, PLOS journal information and metrics documentation (initial checks and the Editorial Board Academic Editor model, a 45-day median first decision for January to June 2023 and 32 days for 2025, 30.82% rejected without peer review for January to June 2023, and 7 publication criteria with scientific rigor regardless of novelty), and Manusights pre-submission review experience with PLOS ONE-targeted manuscripts.

For the open-access multidisciplinary landscape beyond PLOS ONE, see Scientific Reports (Nature Portfolio open-access), International Journal of Molecular Sciences (MDPI molecular sciences), Heliyon (Elsevier multidisciplinary), F1000Research (open-access post-publication review), and PLOS specialty journals (PLOS Biology, PLOS Medicine, PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Global Public Health, PLOS Digital Health).

The choice across these titles depends on whether the central contribution is multidisciplinary scientific rigor (PLOS ONE), Nature Portfolio open-access (Scientific Reports), MDPI molecular sciences (IJMS), Elsevier multidisciplinary (Heliyon), open-access post-publication (F1000Research), or specialty PLOS scope (PLOS Biology, Medicine, Computational Biology, Genetics, Global Public Health, Digital Health).

Reviewers at PLOS ONE are selected by the handling editor based on expertise, publication history, and past reviews under a criteria-based review model. Editors screen and triage manuscripts before any reviewer sees them, and preparing a response template that addresses the 7 publication criteria explicitly accelerates revision rounds substantially.

For a pre-upload check of your manuscript against the PLOS ONE scientific-rigor-plus-7-criteria bar before submission, our PLOS ONE pre-submission diagnostic flags the data-availability and conclusions-supported weaknesses most likely to surface in reviewer reports.