research abstract word limit

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How Long Should an Abstract Be? Word Count & Length

The abstract is perhaps the most important section of your research paper. Apart from the title, it may be the only part of the paper anyone reads. Whether they read further  depends in part on how good an impression your abstract makes .

The abstract may also be the only part of your paper that has a word limit. Most word limits specify a maximum of  between 250 and 300 words , and some journals require that abstracts be as short as 150 words. Writing a great abstract is almost an art—but writing an abstract that meets word limits is, well, a  science .

 Why do journals impose abstract word limits?

There are several reasons your abstract needs to be short and concise. Journals want readers to buy your article, and they want other researchers to cite your study in their own articles. More citations means a higher impact factor for the journal. The best way to sell your study is to grab the reader’s attention with a great title and abstract. Finally, there is the issue of space. Journals want your abstract to fit on half a page so that a reader won’t have to scroll to read all of it.

When it comes to abstracts, less is more. Only essential information needs to be presented. A short, powerful abstract will draw readers into your research and help the journal attract more readers and receive more citations. The trick is how to trim your abstract to get under the word limit. Here are some time- and researcher-tested ways to pull that off.

Omit Needless Words and Adverbs

In their acclaimed guide to English writing,  The Elements of Style , William Strunk, Jr, and E. B. White teach the key to meeting abstract word limits: Omit needless words. Many writers, especially academic writers, pepper their writing with words that simply don’t need to be there.

A “hedge” is a word or phrase you use when you are concerned about making a claim instead of stating a fact. It’s always a good idea to be careful, especially in academic writing, but many authors use hedge words when they don’t need to. Among the most overused hedge words are the verbs “seem” and “appear.” In the examples below, you’ll see why taking away the hedge words does not alter the meaning.

Hedge : Maroney syndrome  seems   to impair quality of life. No Hedge : Maroney syndrome  impairs   quality of life.

Hedge : Ibuprofen  appears   to diminish pain in most patients. No Hedge : Ibuprofen  diminishes   pain in most patients.

In both pairs, the first and second sentences have essentially the same meaning, except that the second sentence omits the hedge word. Notice how the second examples are more powerful and straightforward without this extra verbiage.

Cutting out needless adverbs is another easy way to limit the number of words in an abstract.

With needless adverbs : We  slowly and carefully  dissected the vagus nerve. Without needless adverbs : We dissected the vagus nerve.

By definition, “dissection” is slow and careful (or  should  be!). Removing the needless adverbs “slowly” and “carefully’ leaves you with a sentence with the same meaning and three fewer words. Same your adverbs for situations in which they truly impact the meaning or have an impact on the reader or interpretation.

Remove Awkward and Unnecessary Transitions

Conjunctive adverbs are better known as “ transition terms ,” and although they can be very useful in creating structure and flow within the body of a paper, in the abstract they are often redundant or even incorrectly used. Among the more commonly used conjunctive adverbs are: however, moreover, therefore, furthermore, additionally, and thus.

The conjunction “moreover” is perhaps the most commonly used needless adverb in scientific papers. Some writers use it because they believe it makes them sound more “academic.” Others use it because they may know that it’s a grammatical faux-pas to start a sentence with the conjunction “And.” Nevertheless, “moreover” can virtually  always  be removed from a sentence without altering the meaning. Watch what happens when we remove the word “moreover from these sentences.

With a transition :  Moreover , we dissected the vagus nerve. Without a transition : We dissected the vagus nerve.

In the instance above, “moreover” does not really make sense as a transition term. Even other transition terms (furthermore, therefore, in addition, etc.) would be somewhat unnecessary when discussing how the study or experiment was performed.

With a transition :  Furthermore , patients with Boney-Maroney syndrome are likely to experience hot flashes and fatigue. Without a transition : Patients with Boney-Maroney syndrome are likely to experience hot flashes and fatigue.

Note that these two sentences have exactly the same meaning with and without the transition term “furthermore.”  These transitions can be much more useful in the longer sections of the paper’s body, especially in the Introduction and Discussion/Conclusion sections.

Use the Active Voice Instead of Passive Voice

One way to shorten your abstract is to apply a rule you might have learned in primary school: use active voice instead of passive voice . In active voice constructions, the subject carries the action. In passive voice, the subject is acted upon, usually by an unnamed actor. Scientists seem to be in love with the passive voice, as it can be found in many papers, simply adding to the word count and making the writing less engaging. Because of this longstanding convention, many believe it makes them sound more “scientific.” Others shun active voice because they feel as though it is too personal. That is a shame. Your sentences will often sound more convincing and powerful in active voice, as the following examples demonstrate:

Passive voice : Pituitary cells  were grown  in dishes that had been subjected to irradiation (12 words). Active voice :  We grew  pituitary cells in irradiated dishes (7 words). Passive voice : Three-hundred and forty-five patients  who had undergone  ovariectomy at our institution  were enrolled  in the present study (17 words). Active voice :  We enrolled   345 patients whom we had ovariectomized (eight words).

Remember, studies don’t conduct themselves;  scientists  conduct studies. Avoid using the passive voice in the abstract—save it for the Methods section!

Do not Include Statistical Methods or Findings in the Abstract

Most scientific articles include statistics. Usually, the statistical methods are described in detail in the Methods section of a paper. But many authors feel compelled for some reason to mention statistics in the abstract, perhaps to get the details out first. But unless your paper is primarily about statistics, it is best to keep statistics out of the abstract and stick to language that expresses the most important use and findings of the study. Not only do statistics add to your word count, but they also interrupt the flow of your argument. You certainly do not need to tell the reader what statistical tests you used or the version of the statistics program you used—that is what the Methods section is for. And never go into detail about EXACTLY which findings your study yielded—that is what the Results section is for.

Consent, Approval, and Other Info That Doesn’t Belong in an Abstract

Some authors place information about patient consent and institutional review board approval in the abstract. Whereas this information is indeed essential, it is not necessary to put it in the abstract. Like statistics, consent and approval statements interrupt the flow of your argument. Readers expect to find information about consent and approval in the Methods section. Leaving this out of your abstract will certainly free up your space to describe the importance of your study.

Abstract Word Limits Are not Targets

Keep in mind that a limit of 250 words does not mean that you should attempt to come as close as possible to the limit. The best abstracts include all essential information well before reaching word limit. Use the above tips to help you create a leaner, tighter abstract that will hook readers and entice them to read your full study.

For more helpful suggestions on academic and research writing, check out the links below or visit the Wordvice Academic Resources page. And be sure to receive professional  English editing services , including  paper editing services , for your journal manuscript before submitting it to journal editors.

Wordvice Resources

• Writing the Results Section for a Research Paper
• How to Write a Literature Review
• Research Writing Tips: How to Draft a Powerful Discussion Section
• How to Captivate Journal Readers with a Strong Introduction
• Tips That Will Make Your Abstract a Success!
• APA In-Text Citation Guide for Research Writing
•   “Abstract Guide for Research Papers.”  (Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited)
• “How many words should be in the abstract?”  (Research Gate)
• Strunk and White.  The Elements of Style. ( PDF)
• “Organizing Your Social Science Research Paper: The Abstract.”  (USC Libraries)

Writing an Abstract for Your Research Paper

Definition and Purpose of Abstracts

An abstract is a short summary of your (published or unpublished) research paper, usually about a paragraph (c. 6-7 sentences, 150-250 words) long. A well-written abstract serves multiple purposes:

• an abstract lets readers get the gist or essence of your paper or article quickly, in order to decide whether to read the full paper;
• an abstract prepares readers to follow the detailed information, analyses, and arguments in your full paper;
• and, later, an abstract helps readers remember key points from your paper.

It’s also worth remembering that search engines and bibliographic databases use abstracts, as well as the title, to identify key terms for indexing your published paper. So what you include in your abstract and in your title are crucial for helping other researchers find your paper or article.

If you are writing an abstract for a course paper, your professor may give you specific guidelines for what to include and how to organize your abstract. Similarly, academic journals often have specific requirements for abstracts. So in addition to following the advice on this page, you should be sure to look for and follow any guidelines from the course or journal you’re writing for.

The Contents of an Abstract

Abstracts contain most of the following kinds of information in brief form. The body of your paper will, of course, develop and explain these ideas much more fully. As you will see in the samples below, the proportion of your abstract that you devote to each kind of information—and the sequence of that information—will vary, depending on the nature and genre of the paper that you are summarizing in your abstract. And in some cases, some of this information is implied, rather than stated explicitly. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association , which is widely used in the social sciences, gives specific guidelines for what to include in the abstract for different kinds of papers—for empirical studies, literature reviews or meta-analyses, theoretical papers, methodological papers, and case studies.

Here are the typical kinds of information found in most abstracts:

• the context or background information for your research; the general topic under study; the specific topic of your research
• the central questions or statement of the problem your research addresses
• what’s already known about this question, what previous research has done or shown
• the main reason(s) , the exigency, the rationale , the goals for your research—Why is it important to address these questions? Are you, for example, examining a new topic? Why is that topic worth examining? Are you filling a gap in previous research? Applying new methods to take a fresh look at existing ideas or data? Resolving a dispute within the literature in your field? . . .
• your research and/or analytical methods
• your main findings , results , or arguments
• the significance or implications of your findings or arguments.

Your abstract should be intelligible on its own, without a reader’s having to read your entire paper. And in an abstract, you usually do not cite references—most of your abstract will describe what you have studied in your research and what you have found and what you argue in your paper. In the body of your paper, you will cite the specific literature that informs your research.

When to Write Your Abstract

Although you might be tempted to write your abstract first because it will appear as the very first part of your paper, it’s a good idea to wait to write your abstract until after you’ve drafted your full paper, so that you know what you’re summarizing.

What follows are some sample abstracts in published papers or articles, all written by faculty at UW-Madison who come from a variety of disciplines. We have annotated these samples to help you see the work that these authors are doing within their abstracts.

Choosing Verb Tenses within Your Abstract

The social science sample (Sample 1) below uses the present tense to describe general facts and interpretations that have been and are currently true, including the prevailing explanation for the social phenomenon under study. That abstract also uses the present tense to describe the methods, the findings, the arguments, and the implications of the findings from their new research study. The authors use the past tense to describe previous research.

The humanities sample (Sample 2) below uses the past tense to describe completed events in the past (the texts created in the pulp fiction industry in the 1970s and 80s) and uses the present tense to describe what is happening in those texts, to explain the significance or meaning of those texts, and to describe the arguments presented in the article.

The science samples (Samples 3 and 4) below use the past tense to describe what previous research studies have done and the research the authors have conducted, the methods they have followed, and what they have found. In their rationale or justification for their research (what remains to be done), they use the present tense. They also use the present tense to introduce their study (in Sample 3, “Here we report . . .”) and to explain the significance of their study (In Sample 3, This reprogramming . . . “provides a scalable cell source for. . .”).

Sample Abstract 1

From the social sciences.

Reporting new findings about the reasons for increasing economic homogamy among spouses

Gonalons-Pons, Pilar, and Christine R. Schwartz. “Trends in Economic Homogamy: Changes in Assortative Mating or the Division of Labor in Marriage?” Demography , vol. 54, no. 3, 2017, pp. 985-1005.

Sample Abstract 2

From the humanities.

Analyzing underground pulp fiction publications in Tanzania, this article makes an argument about the cultural significance of those publications

Emily Callaci. “Street Textuality: Socialism, Masculinity, and Urban Belonging in Tanzania’s Pulp Fiction Publishing Industry, 1975-1985.” Comparative Studies in Society and History , vol. 59, no. 1, 2017, pp. 183-210.

Sample Abstract/Summary 3

From the sciences.

Reporting a new method for reprogramming adult mouse fibroblasts into induced cardiac progenitor cells

Lalit, Pratik A., Max R. Salick, Daryl O. Nelson, Jayne M. Squirrell, Christina M. Shafer, Neel G. Patel, Imaan Saeed, Eric G. Schmuck, Yogananda S. Markandeya, Rachel Wong, Martin R. Lea, Kevin W. Eliceiri, Timothy A. Hacker, Wendy C. Crone, Michael Kyba, Daniel J. Garry, Ron Stewart, James A. Thomson, Karen M. Downs, Gary E. Lyons, and Timothy J. Kamp. “Lineage Reprogramming of Fibroblasts into Proliferative Induced Cardiac Progenitor Cells by Defined Factors.” Cell Stem Cell , vol. 18, 2016, pp. 354-367.

Sample Abstract 4, a Structured Abstract

Reporting results about the effectiveness of antibiotic therapy in managing acute bacterial sinusitis, from a rigorously controlled study

Note: This journal requires authors to organize their abstract into four specific sections, with strict word limits. Because the headings for this structured abstract are self-explanatory, we have chosen not to add annotations to this sample abstract.

Wald, Ellen R., David Nash, and Jens Eickhoff. “Effectiveness of Amoxicillin/Clavulanate Potassium in the Treatment of Acute Bacterial Sinusitis in Children.” Pediatrics , vol. 124, no. 1, 2009, pp. 9-15.

“OBJECTIVE: The role of antibiotic therapy in managing acute bacterial sinusitis (ABS) in children is controversial. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of high-dose amoxicillin/potassium clavulanate in the treatment of children diagnosed with ABS.

METHODS : This was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Children 1 to 10 years of age with a clinical presentation compatible with ABS were eligible for participation. Patients were stratified according to age (<6 or ≥6 years) and clinical severity and randomly assigned to receive either amoxicillin (90 mg/kg) with potassium clavulanate (6.4 mg/kg) or placebo. A symptom survey was performed on days 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 20, and 30. Patients were examined on day 14. Children’s conditions were rated as cured, improved, or failed according to scoring rules.

RESULTS: Two thousand one hundred thirty-five children with respiratory complaints were screened for enrollment; 139 (6.5%) had ABS. Fifty-eight patients were enrolled, and 56 were randomly assigned. The mean age was 6630 months. Fifty (89%) patients presented with persistent symptoms, and 6 (11%) presented with nonpersistent symptoms. In 24 (43%) children, the illness was classified as mild, whereas in the remaining 32 (57%) children it was severe. Of the 28 children who received the antibiotic, 14 (50%) were cured, 4 (14%) were improved, 4(14%) experienced treatment failure, and 6 (21%) withdrew. Of the 28children who received placebo, 4 (14%) were cured, 5 (18%) improved, and 19 (68%) experienced treatment failure. Children receiving the antibiotic were more likely to be cured (50% vs 14%) and less likely to have treatment failure (14% vs 68%) than children receiving the placebo.

CONCLUSIONS : ABS is a common complication of viral upper respiratory infections. Amoxicillin/potassium clavulanate results in significantly more cures and fewer failures than placebo, according to parental report of time to resolution.” (9)

Some Excellent Advice about Writing Abstracts for Basic Science Research Papers, by Professor Adriano Aguzzi from the Institute of Neuropathology at the University of Zurich:

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How to Write an Abstract APA Format

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

An APA abstract is a brief, comprehensive summary of the contents of an article, research paper, dissertation, or report.

It is written in accordance with the guidelines of the American Psychological Association (APA), which is a widely used format in social and behavioral sciences. 

An APA abstract summarizes, usually in one paragraph of between 150–250 words, the major aspects of a research paper or dissertation in a prescribed sequence that includes:

• The rationale: the overall purpose of the study, providing a clear context for the research undertaken.
• Information regarding the method and participants: including materials/instruments, design, procedure, and data analysis.
• Main findings or trends: effectively highlighting the key outcomes of the hypotheses.
• Interpretations and conclusion(s): solidify the implications of the research.
• Keywords related to the study: assist the paper’s discoverability in academic databases.

The abstract should stand alone, be “self-contained,” and make sense to the reader in isolation from the main article.

The purpose of the abstract is to give the reader a quick overview of the essential information before reading the entire article. The abstract is placed on its own page, directly after the title page and before the main body of the paper.

Although the abstract will appear as the very first part of your paper, it’s good practice to write your abstract after you’ve drafted your full paper, so that you know what you’re summarizing.

Note : This page reflects the latest version of the APA Publication Manual (i.e., APA 7), released in October 2019.

Structure of the Abstract

[NOTE: DO NOT separate the components of the abstract – it should be written as a single paragraph. This section is separated to illustrate the abstract’s structure.]

1) The Rationale

One or two sentences describing the overall purpose of the study and the research problem(s) you investigated. You are basically justifying why this study was conducted.

• What is the importance of the research?
• Why would a reader be interested in the larger work?
• For example, are you filling a gap in previous research or applying new methods to take a fresh look at existing ideas or data?
• Women who are diagnosed with breast cancer can experience an array of psychosocial difficulties; however, social support, particularly from a spouse, has been shown to have a protective function during this time. This study examined the ways in which a woman’s daily mood, pain, and fatigue, and her spouse’s marital satisfaction predict the woman’s report of partner support in the context of breast cancer.
• The current nursing shortage, high hospital nurse job dissatisfaction, and reports of uneven quality of hospital care are not uniquely American phenomena.
• Students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are more likely to exhibit behavioral difficulties than their typically developing peers. The aim of this study was to identify specific risk factors that influence variability in behavior difficulties among individuals with SEND.

2) The Method

Information regarding the participants (number, and population). One or two sentences outlining the method, explaining what was done and how. The method is described in the present tense.

• Pretest data from a larger intervention study and multilevel modeling were used to examine the effects of women’s daily mood, pain, and fatigue and average levels of mood, pain, and fatigue on women’s report of social support received from her partner, as well as how the effects of mood interacted with partners’ marital satisfaction.
• This paper presents reports from 43,000 nurses from more than 700 hospitals in the United States, Canada, England, Scotland, and Germany in 1998–1999.
• The study sample comprised 4,228 students with SEND, aged 5–15, drawn from 305 primary and secondary schools across England. Explanatory variables were measured at the individual and school levels at baseline, along with a teacher-reported measure of behavior difficulties (assessed at baseline and the 18-month follow-up).

3) The Results

One or two sentences indicating the main findings or trends found as a result of your analysis. The results are described in the present or past tense.

• Results show that on days in which women reported higher levels of negative or positive mood, as well as on days they reported more pain and fatigue, they reported receiving more support. Women who, on average, reported higher levels of positive mood tended to report receiving more support than those who, on average, reported lower positive mood. However, average levels of negative mood were not associated with support. Higher average levels of fatigue but not pain were associated with higher support. Finally, women whose husbands reported higher levels of marital satisfaction reported receiving more partner support, but husbands’ marital satisfaction did not moderate the effect of women’s mood on support.
• Nurses in countries with distinctly different healthcare systems report similar shortcomings in their work environments and the quality of hospital care. While the competence of and relation between nurses and physicians appear satisfactory, core problems in work design and workforce management threaten the provision of care.
• Hierarchical linear modeling of data revealed that differences between schools accounted for between 13% (secondary) and 15.4% (primary) of the total variance in the development of students’ behavior difficulties, with the remainder attributable to individual differences. Statistically significant risk markers for these problems across both phases of education were being male, eligibility for free school meals, being identified as a bully, and lower academic achievement. Additional risk markers specific to each phase of education at the individual and school levels are also acknowledged.

4) The Conclusion / Implications

A brief summary of your conclusions and implications of the results, described in the present tense. Explain the results and why the study is important to the reader.

• For example, what changes should be implemented as a result of the findings of the work?
• How does this work add to the body of knowledge on the topic?

Implications of these findings are discussed relative to assisting couples during this difficult time in their lives.

• Resolving these issues, which are amenable to managerial intervention, is essential to preserving patient safety and care of consistently high quality.
• Behavior difficulties are affected by risks across multiple ecological levels. Addressing any one of these potential influences is therefore likely to contribute to the reduction in the problems displayed.

The above examples of abstracts are from the following papers:

Aiken, L. H., Clarke, S. P., Sloane, D. M., Sochalski, J. A., Busse, R., Clarke, H., … & Shamian, J. (2001). Nurses’ reports on hospital care in five countries . Health affairs, 20(3) , 43-53.

Boeding, S. E., Pukay-Martin, N. D., Baucom, D. H., Porter, L. S., Kirby, J. S., Gremore, T. M., & Keefe, F. J. (2014). Couples and breast cancer: Women’s mood and partners’ marital satisfaction predicting support perception . Journal of Family Psychology, 28(5) , 675.

Oldfield, J., Humphrey, N., & Hebron, J. (2017). Risk factors in the development of behavior difficulties among students with special educational needs and disabilities: A multilevel analysis . British journal of educational psychology, 87(2) , 146-169.

5) Keywords

APA style suggests including a list of keywords at the end of the abstract. This is particularly common in academic articles and helps other researchers find your work in databases.

Keywords in an abstract should be selected to help other researchers find your work when searching an online database. These keywords should effectively represent the main topics of your study. Here are some tips for choosing keywords:

Core Concepts: Identify the most important ideas or concepts in your paper. These often include your main research topic, the methods you’ve used, or the theories you’re discussing.

Specificity: Your keywords should be specific to your research. For example, suppose your paper is about the effects of climate change on bird migration patterns in a specific region. In that case, your keywords might include “climate change,” “bird migration,” and the region’s name.

Consistency with Paper: Make sure your keywords are consistent with the terms you’ve used in your paper. For example, if you use the term “adolescent” rather than “teen” in your paper, choose “adolescent” as your keyword, not “teen.”

Jargon and Acronyms: Avoid using too much-specialized jargon or acronyms in your keywords, as these might not be understood or used by all researchers in your field.

Synonyms: Consider including synonyms of your keywords to capture as many relevant searches as possible. For example, if your paper discusses “post-traumatic stress disorder,” you might include “PTSD” as a keyword.

Remember, keywords are a tool for others to find your work, so think about what terms other researchers might use when searching for papers on your topic.

The Abstract SHOULD NOT contain:

Lengthy background or contextual information: The abstract should focus on your research and findings, not general topic background.

Undefined jargon, abbreviations,  or acronyms: The abstract should be accessible to a wide audience, so avoid highly specialized terms without defining them.

Citations: Abstracts typically do not include citations, as they summarize original research.

Incomplete sentences or bulleted lists: The abstract should be a single, coherent paragraph written in complete sentences.

New information not covered in the paper: The abstract should only summarize the paper’s content.

Subjective comments or value judgments: Stick to objective descriptions of your research.

Excessive details on methods or procedures: Keep descriptions of methods brief and focused on main steps.

Speculative or inconclusive statements: The abstract should state the research’s clear findings, not hypotheses or possible interpretations.

• Any illustration, figure, table, or references to them . All visual aids, data, or extensive details should be included in the main body of your paper, not in the abstract. 
• Elliptical or incomplete sentences should be avoided in an abstract . The use of ellipses (…), which could indicate incomplete thoughts or omitted text, is not appropriate in an abstract.

APA Style for Abstracts

An APA abstract must be formatted as follows:

Include the running head aligned to the left at the top of the page (professional papers only) and page number. Note, student papers do not require a running head. On the first line, center the heading “Abstract” and bold (do not underlined or italicize). Do not indent the single abstract paragraph (which begins one line below the section title). Double-space the text. Use Times New Roman font in 12 pt. Set one-inch (or 2.54 cm) margins. If you include a “keywords” section at the end of the abstract, indent the first line and italicize the word “Keywords” while leaving the keywords themselves without any formatting.

Example APA Abstract Page

Download this example as a PDF

Further Information

• APA 7th Edition Abstract and Keywords Guide
• Example APA Abstract
• How to Write a Good Abstract for a Scientific Paper or Conference Presentation
• How to Write a Lab Report
• Writing an APA paper

How long should an APA abstract be?

An APA abstract should typically be between 150 to 250 words long. However, the exact length may vary depending on specific publication or assignment guidelines. It is crucial that it succinctly summarizes the essential elements of the work, including purpose, methods, findings, and conclusions.

Where does the abstract go in an APA paper?

In an APA formatted paper, the abstract is placed on its own page, directly after the title page and before the main body of the paper. It’s typically the second page of the document. It starts with the word “Abstract” (centered and not in bold) at the top of the page, followed by the text of the abstract itself.

What are the 4 C’s of abstract writing?

The 4 C’s of abstract writing are an approach to help you create a well-structured and informative abstract. They are:

Conciseness: An abstract should briefly summarize the key points of your study. Stick to the word limit (typically between 150-250 words for an APA abstract) and avoid unnecessary details.

Clarity: Your abstract should be easy to understand. Avoid jargon and complex sentences. Clearly explain the purpose, methods, results, and conclusions of your study.

Completeness: Even though it’s brief, the abstract should provide a complete overview of your study, including the purpose, methods, key findings, and your interpretation of the results.

Cohesion: The abstract should flow logically from one point to the next, maintaining a coherent narrative about your study. It’s not just a list of disjointed elements; it’s a brief story of your research from start to finish.

What is the abstract of a psychology paper?

An abstract in a psychology paper serves as a snapshot of the paper, allowing readers to quickly understand the purpose, methodology, results, and implications of the research without reading the entire paper. It is generally between 150-250 words long.

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Title, Abstract and Keywords

The importance of titles.

The title of your manuscript is usually the first introduction readers (and reviewers) have to your work. Therefore, you must select a title that grabs attention, accurately describes the contents of your manuscript, and makes people want to read further.

An effective title should:

• Convey the  main topics  of the study
• Highlight the  importance  of the research
• Be  concise
• Attract  readers

Writing a good title for your manuscript can be challenging. First, list the topics covered by the manuscript. Try to put all of the topics together in the title using as few words as possible. A title that is too long will seem clumsy, annoy readers, and probably not meet journal requirements.

Does Vaccinating Children and Adolescents with Inactivated Influenza Virus Inhibit the Spread of Influenza in Unimmunized Residents of Rural Communities?

This title has too many unnecessary words.

Influenza Vaccination of Children: A Randomized Trial

This title doesn’t give enough information about what makes the manuscript interesting.

Effect of Child Influenza Vaccination on Infection Rates in Rural Communities: A Randomized Trial This is an effective title. It is short, easy to understand, and conveys the important aspects of the research.

Think about why your research will be of interest to other scientists. This should be related to the reason you decided to study the topic. If your title makes this clear, it will likely attract more readers to your manuscript. TIP: Write down a few possible titles, and then select the best to refine further. Ask your colleagues their opinion. Spending the time needed to do this will result in a better title.

Abstract and Keywords

The Abstract is:

• A  summary  of the content of the journal manuscript
• A time-saving  shortcut  for busy researchers
• A guide to the most important parts of your manuscript’s written content

Many readers will only read the Abstract of your manuscript. Therefore, it has to be able to  stand alone . In most cases the abstract is the only part of your article that appears in indexing databases such as Web of Science or PubMed and so will be the most accessed part of your article; making a good impression will encourage researchers to read your full paper.

A well written abstract can also help speed up the peer-review process. During peer review, referees are usually only sent the abstract when invited to review the paper. Therefore, the abstract needs to contain enough information about the paper to allow referees to make a judgement as to whether they have enough expertise to review the paper and be engaging enough for them to want to review it.

Your Abstract should answer these questions about your manuscript:

• What was done?
• Why did you do it?
• What did you find?
• Why are these findings useful and important?

Answering these questions lets readers know the most important points about your study, and helps them decide whether they want to read the rest of the paper. Make sure you follow the proper journal manuscript formatting guidelines when preparing your abstract.

TIP: Journals often set a maximum word count for Abstracts, often 250 words, and no citations. This is to ensure that the full Abstract appears in indexing services.

Keywords  are a tool to help indexers and search engines find relevant papers. If database search engines can find your journal manuscript, readers will be able to find it too. This will increase the number of people reading your manuscript, and likely lead to more citations.

However, to be effective, Keywords must be chosen carefully. They should:

• Represent  the content of your manuscript
• Be  specific  to your field or sub-field

Manuscript title:  Direct observation of nonlinear optics in an isolated carbon nanotube

Poor keywords:  molecule, optics, lasers, energy lifetime

Better keywords:  single-molecule interaction, Kerr effect, carbon nanotubes, energy level structure

Manuscript title:  Region-specific neuronal degeneration after okadaic acid administration Poor keywords:  neuron, brain, OA (an abbreviation), regional-specific neuronal degeneration, signaling

Better keywords:  neurodegenerative diseases; CA1 region, hippocampal; okadaic acid; neurotoxins; MAP kinase signaling system; cell death

Manuscript title:  Increases in levels of sediment transport at former glacial-interglacial transitions

Poor keywords:  climate change, erosion, plant effects Better keywords:  quaternary climate change, soil erosion, bioturbation

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Undergraduate Research Center

The following instructions are for the Undergraduate Research Center's Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities Conference, however the general concepts will apply to abstracts for similar conferences.  In the video to the right, Kendon Kurzer, PhD presents guidance from the University Writing Program.  To see abstracts from previous URC Conferences, visit our Abstract Books Page .

What is an abstract?

An abstract is a summary of a research project. Abstracts precede papers in research journals and appear in programs of scholarly conferences. In journals, the abstract allows readers to quickly grasp the purpose and major ideas of a paper and lets other researchers know whether reading the entire paper will be worthwhile. In conferences, the abstract is the advertisement that the paper/presentation deserves the audience's attention.

Why write an abstract?

The abstract allows readers to make decisions about your project. Your sponsoring professor can use the abstract to decide if your research is proceeding smoothly. The conference organizer uses it to decide if your project fits the conference criteria. The conference audience (faculty, administrators, peers, and presenters' families) uses your abstract to decide whether or not to attend your presentation. Your abstract needs to take all these readers into consideration.

How does an abstract appeal to such a broad audience?

The audience for the abstract for the Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities Conference (URSCA) covers the broadest possible scope--from expert to lay person. You need to find a comfortable balance between writing an abstract that both shows your knowledge and yet is still comprehensible--with some effort--by lay members of the audience. Limit the amount of technical language you use and explain it where possible. Always use the full term before you refer to it by acronym Example:  DNA double-stranded breaks (DSBs). Remember that you are yourself an expert in the field that you are writing about--don't take for granted that the reader will share your insider knowledge.

What should the abstract include?

Think of your abstract as a condensed version of your whole project. By reading it, the reader should understand the nature of your research question.

Like abstracts that researchers prepare for scholarly conferences, the abstract you submit for the Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and Creativities Conference (URSCA) will most likely reflect work still in progress at the time you write it. Although the content will vary according to field and specific project, all abstracts, whether in the sciences or the humanities, convey the following information:

• The purpose of the project identifying the area of study to which it belongs.
• The research problem that motivates the project.
• The methods used to address this research problem, documents or evidence analyzed.
• The conclusions reached or, if the research is in progress, what the preliminary results of the investigation suggest, or what the research methods demonstrate.
• The significance of the research project. Why are the results useful? What is new to our understanding as the result of your inquiry?

Whatever kind of research you are doing, your abstract should provide the reader with answers to the following questions: What are you asking? Why is it important? How will you study it? What will you use to demonstrate your conclusions? What are those conclusions? What do they mean?

SUGGESTED CONTENT STRUCTURE:  

Brief Background/Introduction/Research Context:       What do we know about the topic? Why is the topic important?   Present Research Question/Purpose:       What is the study about? Methods/Materials/Subjects/Materials:       How was the study done? Results/Findings:         What was discovered?    Discussion/Conclusion/Implications/Recommendations       What does it mean?

What if the research is in progress and I don't have results yet? 

For the URSCA Conference you can write a "Promissory Abstract"  which will still describe the background, purpose and how you will accomplish your study's purpose and why it is important.  Phrases like  "to show whether"  or "to determine if"  can be helpful to avoid sharing a "hoped for" result. 

Stylistic considerations

The abstract should be one paragraph for the URSCA Conference and should not exceed the word limit (150-200 words). Edit it closely to be sure it meets the Four C's of abstract writing:

• Complete — it covers the major parts of the project.
• Concise — it contains no excess wordiness or unnecessary information.
• Clear — it is readable, well organized, and not too jargon-laden.
• Cohesive — it flows smoothly between the parts.

The importance of understandable language

Because all researchers hope their work will be useful to others, and because good scholarship is increasingly used across disciplines, it is crucial to make the language of your abstracts accessible to a non-specialist. Simplify your language. Friends in another major will spot instantly what needs to be more understandable. Some problem areas to look for:

• Eliminate jargon. Showing off your technical vocabulary will not demonstrate that your research is valuable. If using a technical term is unavoidable, add a non-technical synonym to help a non-specialist infer the term's meaning.
• Omit needless words—redundant modifiers, pompous diction, excessive detail.
• Avoid stringing nouns together (make the relationship clear with prepositions).
• Eliminate "narration," expressions such as "It is my opinion that," "I have concluded," "the main point supporting my view/concerns," or "certainly there is little doubt as to. . . ." Focus attention solely on what the reader needs to know.

Before submitting your abstract to the URSCA Conference:

• Make sure it is within the word limit.  You can start with a large draft and then edit it down to make sure your abstract is complete but also concise.  (Over-writing is all too easy, so reserve time for cutting your abstract down to the essential information.).  
• Make sure the language is understandable by a non-specialist. (Avoid writing for an audience that includes only you and your professor.)
• Have your sponsoring professor work with you and approve the abstract before you submit it online.
• Only one abstract per person is allowed for the URSCA Conference.  

Multimedia Risk Assessment of Biodiesel - Tier II Antfarm Project

Significant knowledge gaps exist in the fate, transport, biodegradation, and toxicity properties of biodiesel when it is leaked into the environment. In order to fill these gaps, a combination of experiments has been developed in a Multimedia Risk Assessment of Biodiesel for the State of California. Currently, in the Tier II experimental phase of this assessment, I am investigating underground plume mobility of 20% and 100% additized and unadditized Soy and Animal Fat based biodiesel blends and comparing them to Ultra Low-Sulfer Diesel #2 (USLD) by filming these fuels as they seep through unsaturated sand, encounter a simulated underground water table, and form a floating lens on top of the water. Thus far, initial findings in analyzing the digital images created during the filming process have indicated that all fuels tested have similar travel times. SoyB20 behaves most like USLD in that they both have a similar lateral dispersion lens on top of the water table. In contrast, Animal Fat B100 appears to be most different from ULSD in that it has a narrower residual plume in the unsaturated sand, as well as a narrower and deeper lens formation on top of the water table.

Narrative Representation of Grief

In William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go how can grief, an incomprehensible and incommunicable emotion, be represented in fiction? Is it paradoxical, or futile, to do so? I look at two novels that struggle with representing intense combinations of individual and communal grief: William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go . At first glance, the novels appear to have nothing in common: Faulkner's is a notoriously bleak odyssey told in emotionally heavy stream-of-consciousness narrative, while Ishiguro's is a near-kitschy blend of a coming-of-age tale and a sci-fi dystopia. But they share a rare common thread. They do not try to convey a story, a character, an argument, or a realization, so much as they try to convey an emotion. The novels' common struggle is visible through their formal elements, down to the most basic technical aspects of how the stories are told. Each text, in its own way, enacts the trauma felt by its characters because of their grief, and also the frustration felt by its narrator (or narrators) because of the complex and guilty task of witnessing for grief and loss.

This webpage was based on articles written by Professor Diana Strazdes, Art History and Dr. Amy Clarke, University Writing Program, UC Davis. Thanks to both for their contributions.

Psychological Science Submission Guidelines

Updated 27 December 2023

Psychological Science welcomes the submission of papers presenting empirical research in the field of psychology. Preference is given to papers that make an important contribution to psychological science, broadly interpreted to include emerging as well as established areas of research, across specialties of psychology and related fields, and that are written to be relevant for and intelligible to a wide range of readers. Please see the most recent editorials ( Hardwicke & Vazire, 2023 and Vazire 2023 ) for more information about the latest developments at Psychological Science .

Submission of Manuscripts

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically to the  Psychological Science  submission site,  http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/psci . Before submitting your manuscript, please be sure to read the submission guidelines below. You may also want to consult the  Contributor FAQ.

Read the latest  editorial policies  from the APS Publications Committee.

Quick Links

Three-tier review.

• Criteria for Acceptance

Journals of the Association for Psychological Science (APS)

Article types, manuscript style, structure, and content, preregistration.

• Analysis Scripts

Computational Reproducibility

• Licensing Materials, Data, and Analysis Scripts
• Transparency Constraints and Responsible Sharing
• Funding Disclosures
• Conflict of Interest Disclosures
• Artificial Intelligence Disclosures

Author Contributions

Preparation of graphics, supplemental files, contributor faq, onlinefirst publication and twips, manuscript review process.

For an overview of the peer review process, see Questions 1 and 2 of the Contributor FAQ . For most submitted manuscripts, at least two members of the editorial team read the manuscript before an initial decision (to reject the submission without review, or to send it out for review) is made. In this initial review, manuscripts are anonymized as to authors and originating institutions. To facilitate this approach, authors will be asked to upload an anonymized version of the submission. If both readers decide the paper is unlikely to be competitive for publication, then the paper is rejected without review (“desk rejected’). Some common reasons for desk rejection include: narrow scope, poor writing, insufficient methodological rigor, insufficient transparency, overclaiming or exaggeration, mismatch between the research aims and the research design, mismatch between the empirical results and the conclusions, signs of flexibility in data collection or analysis, and high risk of statistical inference error (e.g., false positive or false negative, inflated effect size estimate).

If either reader evaluates the paper as having a reasonable likelihood of ultimately being accepted for publication in the journal, then it is sent to two or more external reviewers for extended review. An Associate Editor usually oversees this process and writes the subsequent decision letter (accept, reject, or revise and resubmit).

Once the initial review is completed, authors are notified by e-mail that their manuscript either (a) has been rejected on initial editorial review or (b) has been sent to outside experts for extended review (the second tier of review). Manuscripts rejected after either initial or extended review will not be reconsidered unless the responsible action editor has invited resubmission following revision (see Question 16 in the Contributor FAQ ).

Upon submission, authors will be asked to identify a relevant editor whom they recommend for handling of their submission. Note that only the Senior and Associate Editors (and the Editor in Chief) handle submissions, STAR Editors do not handle submissions. Authors also have the option to recommend one or more reviewers when submitting a manuscript. However, these recommendations should exclude all authors’ former mentors and mentees, current colleagues at the same university, current or recent (within the past four years) collaborators, and anyone else who would reasonably be perceived as having a conflict of interest with any of the authors. Please keep in mind that the editor will consider these recommendations but cannot guarantee that they will be honored.

After extended review, if the Action Editor deems the manuscript suitable for publication in Psychological Science , the authors will be notified that their manuscript has been conditionally accepted and the manuscript will enter the third tier of review, STAR transparency review. Statistics, Transparency, and Rigor (STAR) editors will perform routine transparency checks at this stage, in coordination with the Action Editor. The waiting time during this tier of review can be markedly reduced by authors following best practices for transparent reporting (see Research Transparency Statement )  below for more information, and go here for educational resources [link coming]). If capacity allows, STAR editors will also randomly select articles for computational reproducibility checks.

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Criteria for Acceptance for Publication in Psychological Science

The main criteria for publication in Psychological Science are general theoretical and empirical significance and methodological/statistical rigor.

• “General” because to warrant publication in this journal a manuscript must be of general interest to psychological scientists. Research that is likely to be read and understood only by specialists in a subdomain is better suited for a more specialized journal.
• “Theoretical and empirical significance” because research published in Psychological Science should be strongly empirically grounded and should address an issue that makes a difference in the way psychologists and scholars in related disciplines think about important issues. Work that aims to only modestly extend knowledge can be valuable but is unlikely to meet criteria for acceptance in this highly selective journal. Note that the emphasis here is on the significance of the aims and design of the research, rather than on the significance of the results.
• “Methodological/statistical rigor” because the validity of methods and inferences are foundational values of science.  Science, like the rest of life, is full of trade-offs, and the editors at Psychological Science appreciate that it is more difficult to attain high levels of precision and validity in some important areas of psychology than others.  Nonetheless, to succeed, submissions must be as rigorous as is practically and ethically feasible, and must also be frank in addressing limits on their validity (including construct validity, internal validity, statistical validity, and external validity or generalizability). In addition, manuscripts must pass STAR review before being accepted for publication.

Replication studies, generalizability tests, and other verification work can meet these criteria. If a published study is of general interest, has theoretical and empirical significance, and there is appreciable uncertainty about the results, then a high quality study testing the replicability or generalizability of the effect may also meet the criteria for publication.

The journal aims to publish works that meet these three criteria in a wide range of substantive areas of psychological science.  Historically, experimental fields, and especially cognitive and social psychology, have been dominant in this journal, and research participants often are from a restricted range of the world’s population. Moreover, the majority of articles published in the journal are authored by scientists from the United States. The editors encourage submissions from a broader range of research designs, including observational, longitudinal, descriptive, and qualitative or mixed methods, and from a broader span of areas within psychological science, including, for example, biological psychology, cognitive and affective neuroscience, communication and language, comparative, cross-cultural, developmental, gender and sexuality, and health (and this is not intended as a comprehensive list).  The editors also encourage submissions of work with populations that are underrepresented in the psychology literature, as well as of submissions that take psychological science into “the wild”—the natural contexts in which we live—or whose designs give special attention to the realism and authenticity of the procedures, stimuli, measures, and materials. The editors are also eager to receive submissions of work conducted by psychological scientists from around the world.

Submissions centered on clinical science that meet the criteria outlined above will be considered, but many clinically oriented manuscripts are likely to be of primary interest to clinicians and hence are more appropriate for Clinical Psychological Science . Similarly, works with a primary focus on methods and research practices are generally better suited for Advances in Methods & Practices in Psychological Science , yet the editors are open to considering methodological manuscripts of extraordinary generality and importance.

Note that ‘important’ differs from ‘novel’, ‘statistically significant’, and ‘surprising’. The editors welcome submissions that are not novel (e.g., a direct or close replication), and/or not statistically significant (e.g., evidence of absence; or inconclusive results, when more evidence would be difficult to collect), provided the research is rigorous and a strong case is made for the importance of the work. Moreover, submissions that overclaim (e.g., draw conclusions that are not well-calibrated to the evidence or to the strengths and limitations of the research design) are more likely to be rejected. Authors are expected to make a compelling but well-calibrated case for the importance of the research, and the editors will be open to many different ways a contribution can be important (e.g., theoretical or applied value, methodological innovation, value of the data, etc.).

Psychological Science  does not compete with other journals of APS, including  Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science ,  Clinical Psychological Science ,  Current Directions in Psychological Science ,  Perspectives on Psychological Science , and  Psychological Science in the Public Interest . The journals vary in terms of domain and manuscript formats. Manuscripts rejected by another APS journal on the grounds of quality (e.g., flaws in methodology, data, or concept) are not eligible for consideration by  Psychological Science .

Preparing Your Manuscript

See also Table 1 below.

Research Article. Most of the articles published in Psychological Science are Research Articles. Research articles make empirical and theoretical contributions that propel psychological science in substantial and significant ways. Novel studies, replication studies, and extension studies are all welcome, so long as they meet the criteria outlined above. Meta-analyses and other forms of evidence synthesis are typically not considered. The description and word limits of the sections of Research Articles can be found below.

Abstract: All Research Articles must include a 150-word abstract that identifies the sample sizes and participant populations on which the research was conducted, and any important limitations of the research design. The abstract does not count toward the word limit.

Introduction, Discussion, Footnotes, Acknowledgments, and Appendices: These sections may contain no more than 2,000 words combined. Authors are encouraged to be concise and focused in the Introduction and Discussion sections to keep them as brief as possible while also establishing the significance of the work. This word limit does not include the Abstract, Method and Results sections (except footnotes), cover page, or reference list.

Method and Results: These sections of Research Articles do not count toward the total word limit. The aim of unrestricted length for Method and Results sections is to allow authors to provide clear, complete, self-contained descriptions of their studies. But as much as Psychological Science prizes narrative clarity and completeness, so too does it value concision. In almost all cases, an adequate account of method and results can be achieved in 2,500 or fewer words for Research Articles. Methodological minutiae and fine-grained details on the Results—the sorts of information that only “insiders” would relish —should be placed in Supplemental Files, not in the main text . However, a reader who reads only the main text should not come away with any misconceptions or major gaps in their understanding of the method and results. Moreover, all details of the method and analyses necessary for an independent researcher to replicate the study must be included in either the main text or the Supplemental Files.

Authors should include in their Method sections (a) description of the sample(s) selected for the study and an explanation of the basis(es) for the composition of their samples (whether the sample was selected for specific theoretical or conceptual reasons, is a sample of convenience, etc.); (b) the total number of excluded observations and the reasons for making the exclusions (if any); and (c) an explanation as to why the sample size is considered reasonable, supported by a formal power analysis, if appropriate. Authors also should include confirmation in their Method section that the research meets relevant ethical guidelines. Hybrid “Method & Results” sections are disallowed for any type of submission.

Discussion: In the Discussion (or General Discussion), authors should explicitly consider the limitations of their research design (including but not limited to explicit consideration of the limits on the generalizability of their findings) and the most important limitations should be reflected in authors’ conclusions and abstract.

Many Research Articles contain two or more studies. Such submissions may include “interim” introductions and discussions that bracket the studies, in addition to an opening “general” introduction and a closing “general” discussion. Authors who opt for this sort of organization should bear in mind that the aforementioned word limits on introductory and Discussion sections include both interim and general varieties. Any combined “Results and Discussion” sections will be counted toward the word limit.

Narrative material that belongs in the Introduction or Discussion section should not be placed in the Method or Results section, within reasonable limits. Thus, for example, authors may include a few sentences to place their findings in context when they are presented in the Results section. However, excessive packing of a Method or Results section with material appropriate to the Introduction or Discussion will trigger immediate revision or rejection of the manuscript.

References: Authors are encouraged to cite only the sources that bear on the point directly, and to refrain from extensive parenthetical lists of related materials, keeping in mind that citations are meant to be supportive and not exhaustive. As a general rule, 40 citations should be sufficient for most Research Articles. However this is not a hard-and-fast limit, and editors have the flexibility to allow more references if they are necessary to establish the scientific foundation for the work.

Short Report. As of May 15, 2020, Psychological Science is no longer considering Short Reports for publication. Manuscripts that previously would have been submitted in this category should now be submitted as Research Articles.

Preregistered Direct Replication. As of January 1, 2024, Psychological Science is no longer considering Preregistered Direct Replications (PDRs) for publication. Replication submissions can be submitted as Research Articles or as Registered Reports, and they will be evaluated by the same criteria (general interest, theoretical and empirical significance, methodological/statistical rigor) as other submissions. However, to preserve the self-corrective function of PDRs, high quality direct replications of studies previously published in Psychological Science that are submitted as Stage 1 Registered Reports by an author team that is independent of the original authors will be evaluated only on methodological and statistical rigor (i.e., their general interest value and theoretical and empirical significance will be taken as a given).

Registered Report

The cornerstone of the Registered Reports format is that a significant part of the manuscript will be assessed prior to data collection, with the highest quality submissions accepted in advance. Replication studies are welcome as well as novel studies. Note that guidelines for the Research Article article type also apply to the Registered Report article type, unless otherwise specified below.

Titles of manuscripts should begin with “Registered Report”. Initial submissions will include a   description   of   the   key   research   question   and   background   literature, hypotheses, experimental procedures,  analysis  pipeline,  a statistical  power analysis  (or Bayesian equivalent), and pilot data (where applicable). Initial submissions will be triaged by the editorial team for suitability. Those that pass triage will then be sent for in-depth peer review (Stage 1).

Stage 1 review

In considering papers at Stage 1, reviewers will be asked to assess:

• The importance of the research question(s).
• The logic, rationale, and plausibility of the proposed hypotheses.
• The soundness and feasibility of the methodology and analysis pipeline (including statistical power analysis where appropriate).
• Whether the clarity and degree of methodological detail is sufficient to exactly replicate the proposed experimental procedures and analysis pipeline.
• Whether the authors have pre-specified sufficient outcome-neutral tests for ensuring that the results obtained can test the stated hypotheses, including positive controls and quality checks.

Following Stage 1 peer review, the article will then be either rejected or accepted in principle for publication. Following Stage 1 in principle acceptance, the authors agree to register  their  approved   protocol  on  the  Open  Science  Framework  (https://osf.io/)  or  other recognised repository, either publicly or under private embargo until submission of the Stage 2 manuscript. Accepted protocols can be quickly and easily registered using a tailored mechanism for Registered Reports on the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/rr

Following in principle acceptance (IPA), the authors will then proceed to conduct the study, adhering exactly to the peer-reviewed procedures. When the study is complete, the authors will submit their finalized manuscript for re-review (Stage 2). Pending quality checks and a sensible interpretation of the findings, the manuscript will be published regardless of the results.

Stage 2 review

Authors are reminded that any deviation from the stated experimental procedures, regardless of how minor it may seem to the authors, could lead to rejection of the manuscript at Stage 2. In cases where the Stage 1 protocol is altered after IPA due to unforeseen circumstances (e.g., change of equipment or unanticipated technical error), the authors must consult the Action Editor immediately for advice, and prior to the completion of data collection. Minor changes to the protocol may be permitted per editorial discretion. In such cases, IPA would be preserved and the deviation reported in the Stage 2 submission. If the authors wish to alter the experimental procedures more substantially following IPA but still wish to publish their article as a Registered Report then the manuscript must be withdrawn and resubmitted as a new Stage 1 submission. Note that registered analyses must be undertaken, but additional unregistered analyses can also be included in a final manuscript.

Apart from minor stylistic revisions, the Introduction cannot be altered from the  approved Stage 1 submission, and the stated hypotheses cannot be amended or appended. At Stage 2, any description of the rationale or proposed methodology that was written in future tense within the Stage 1 manuscript should be changed to past tense. Any textual changes to the Introduction or Methods (e.g. correction of typographic errors) must  be clearly marked in the Stage 2 submission. Any relevant literature that appeared following the date of IPA should be covered in the Discussion.

The outcome of all registered analyses must be reported in the manuscript, except in rare instances where a registered and approved analysis is subsequently shown to be logically flawed or unfounded. In such cases, the authors, reviewers, and editor must agree that a collective error of judgment was made and that the analysis is inappropriate. In such cases the analysis would still be mentioned in the Methods and the Results section would report the justification for omitting the analysis.

It is reasonable that authors may wish to include additional analyses that were not included in the registered submission. For instance, a new analytic approach might become available between IPA and Stage 2 review, or a particularly interesting and unexpected finding may emerge. Such analyses are admissible but must be clearly justified in the text, appropriately caveated, and reported in a separate section of the Results   titled   “Exploratory analyses”.   Authors   should   be   careful   not   to   base   their conclusions heavily on the outcome of statistically significant post hoc analyses.

In considering papers at Stage 2, reviewers will be asked to decide:

• Whether the data are able to test the authors’ proposed hypotheses by satisfying the approved outcome-neutral conditions (such as quality checks, positive controls)
• Whether the Introduction, rationale and stated hypotheses are the same as the approved Stage 1 submission (required)
• Whether the authors adhered precisely to the registered experimental procedures
• Whether any unregistered post hoc analyses added by the authors are justified, methodologically sound, and informative
• Whether the authors’ conclusions are justified given the data.

 Reviewers are informed that editorial decisions will not be based on the perceived importance, novelty or conclusiveness of the results.

Word limits, Stage 1: Intro: 1,000 words; Method: no limit

Word limits, Stage 2: Intro: 1,000 words; Method: no limit; Results: no limit; Discussion: 1,000 words.

See guidelines above for Research Article article types for more details about what should be included in each section.

Registered Report with Existing Data

Authors wishing to submit a Registered Report using existing data can do so, provided that they have not yet had access to the data (i.e., they are not the owners of the data, have not been sent the dataset, and have not otherwise been given access to the data). This corresponds to Level 4 in the Peer Community in Registered Reports “ levels of bias control ”. The titles of these articles must start with “Registered Report with Existing Data”, and the level of bias control (4 or 5) should be reported in the Research Transparency Statement .

Peer review of Registered Reports with Existing Data will follow the same process as for Registered Reports, but of course the design and methods of the study cannot be altered, and so the rigor of the design and methods, and their match to the research questions and aims, will be a major factor in Stage 1 evaluation.

In exceptional cases, we may consider Registered Reports with Existing Data at levels 2 or 3 of bias control , when the quality and value of the research is exceptionally high, and risk of bias can be greatly reduced through other means. Authors interested in this option should complete a pre-submission inquiry using this form .

See guidelines above for Research Article and Registered Report article types for more details about what should be included in each section.

Commentary . Commentaries critique and/or supplement articles previously published in Psychological Science . The major criteria for a Commentary are that it provides a new perspective on the article it is commenting on, and that this new perspective makes an important difference to the interpretation of the target article. Commentaries can include new data and/or new analyses of existing data, but they need not. Authors are not permitted to write Commentaries on articles on which they are an author or coauthor. Commentaries are limited to 1,000 words (includes main text, notes, acknowledgments, and appendices; does not include 150-word abstract, Method and Results sections, or reference list), 20 references, and one figure (no more than two panels) or one table. The title of a Commentary must begin with the word “Commentary”.

References: Authors are encouraged to cite only the sources that bear on the point directly and to refrain from extensive parenthetical lists of related materials, keeping in mind that citations are meant to be supportive and not exhaustive. As a general rule, 20 citations should be sufficient for most Commentaries. However, this is not a hard-and-fast limit, and editors have the flexibility to allow more references if they are necessary to establish the scientific foundation for the work.

The Action Editor typically solicits a signed review of a submitted Commentary from the lead author of the target article that is interpreted by the editor in light of the lead author’s potential conflict of interest (positive or negative), in addition to reviews by two (or more) independent experts. On acceptance of a Commentary that is critical of the target article, the Action Editor typically will invite the lead author of the target article to submit a Reply to Commentary (see below).

Reply to Commentary . Replies to Commentaries allow authors of articles that are targets of commentaries an opportunity to formally respond. Replies to Commentaries are by invitation only, and like the commentaries that initiated them, they are subject to external review (including by the author of the Commentary) and their acceptance is not assured. The major criterion for a Reply to Commentary is that it makes a unique scientific contribution that makes an important difference to the interpretation of the Commentary.. Replies to Commentaries are limited to 1,000 words (includes main text, notes, acknowledgments, and appendices; does not include 150-word abstract, 150-word Statement of Relevance [see Research Article], cover page, Method and Results sections, or reference list), 20 references, and one figure (no more than two panels) or one table. The title of the Reply to Commentary must be “Reply to [title of Commentary]”.

References: Authors are encouraged to cite only the sources that bear on the point directly and to refrain from extensive parenthetical lists of related materials, keeping in mind that citations are meant to be supportive and not exhaustive. As a general rule, 20 citations should be sufficient for most Replies. However, this is not a hard-and-fast limit, and editors have the flexibility to allow more references if they are necessary to establish the scientific foundation for the work.

Table 1. Limits for Psychological Science Articles by Type

*These are not hard-and-fast limits and editors have the flexibility to allow more references if they are necessary to establish the scientific foundation for the work.

**For commentaries reporting new data, Method and Results sections are not included in the word count.

Manuscripts published in  Psychological Science  must follow the style of the  Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th edition , with respect to handling of the order of manuscript sections, headings and subheadings, references, abbreviations, and symbols. Please embed tables and figures within the main text. For initial submissions, authors may deviate from some of the style requirements (e.g., heading and subheading style, reference format, location of tables and figures). However, invited revisions and final versions of manuscripts must follow APA style. For all article types, for initial review, manuscripts must be anonymized as to authors and originating institutions. To facilitate this approach, authors will be asked to upload a anonymized version of the submission.

Further guidance can be found on our  Manuscript Structure, Style, and Content Guidelines page .

You may upload your manuscript and ancillary files as Word .doc or .docx, as .rtf, as .pdf, or as .tex. If you submit a .tex file, please also submit a PDF file conversion, as the submission portal cannot render .tex files in the PDF proof.

For manuscripts submitted on or after January 1, 2024, badges will not be offered for open data, open materials, or preregistration. Instead, open data and materials will be required (with exemptions considered on a case-by-case basis, see next section), and preregistration will be a factor in editorial evaluations (see Preregistration section below). The availability of data, analysis scripts, materials, and preregistrations will be reported prominently at the top of each article, in a Research Transparency Statement that will be required upon submission for all empirical manuscripts (see next section) and that will be shared with editors and reviewers for evaluation during peer review.

Manuscripts submitted on or after January 1, 2024 can be considered for a new badge, the Computational Reproducibility Badge. See ‘Computational Reproducibility’ section below for more information.

Research Transparency Statement

Transparency enables the scientific community to thoroughly evaluate, efficiently re-use, and independently verify research. To support these goals, Psychological Science requires authors to make their research as open as possible and as closed as necessary. When full transparency is complicated by legal, ethical, or practical constraints, the journal will work with authors to resolve these constraints as far as possible (see “Transparency constraints and responsible sharing” below). Any unresolveable constraints on transparency must be stated and justified in the published manuscript.

Limits on transparency will be a factor in editorial decisions, with editors weighing the degree of transparency, reasons for non-transparency, and potential costs and benefits of allowing non-transparency. Non-transparency that is motivated by the best interest of science (e.g., to protect participant re-identifiability, data sovereignty for indigenous groups, endangered species, public welfare, etc.) will be evaluated more favorably than non-transparency motivated by the interests of the authors or the data owners.

To streamline transparent reporting, Psychological Science requires all empirical manuscripts (Research Articles, Registered Reports, Registered Reports with Existing Data, and any Commentaries or Replies to Commentaries that include new data or analyses) to include a single Research Transparency Statement including disclosures related to preregistration, availability of materials, data, and analysis scripts, selective reporting, use of artificial intelligence, conflicts of interest, and funding. Authors should build their Research Transparency Statement with our dedicated app (link to app coming) which will save time and ensure that all important information is reported. The app will produce a complete Research Transparency Statement which can be copied and pasted into authors’ manuscripts. The Research Transparency Statement should be a separate section of the manuscript, inserted between the Abstract and the Introduction section. It does not count towards word limits.

Until our app is available, please use the following template to construct your Research Transparency Statement.

General Disclosures

Study One Disclosures

Study Two Disclosures

Preregistration: The hypotheses and methods were preregistered ( https://doi.org/10.1080/ ) on 2023-01-01, prior to data collection which began on 2023-01-02. The analysis plan was not preregistered. There were major and minor deviations from the preregistration (for details see Supplementary Table 1). Materials: All study materials are publicly available ( https://doi.org/10.1080/ ). Data: All primary data are publicly available ( https://doi.org/10.1080/ ). Analysis scripts: All analysis scripts are publicly available ( https://doi.org/10.1080/ ). 

Preregistration: No aspects of the study were preregistered. Materials: Some study materials are publicly available ( https://doi.org/10.1080/ ). The survey instrument cannot be shared because of copyright restrictions, but is available from Pam & Jim (2018).  Data: Some primary data are publicly available ( https://doi.org/10.1080/ ). The interview data cannot be shared because it contains identifying information which cannot be removed; however, it is available on request to the corresponding author. Analysis scripts: All analysis scripts are publicly available ( https://doi.org/10.1080/) .

We recognize that research transparency norms are evolving and we are always ready to listen to authors’ views. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the requirements outlined in this section, we encourage you to raise them with the STAR team ( [email protected] ).

Preregistration can reduce bias, increase transparency, and help readers calibrate their confidence in scientific claims ( Hardwicke & Wagenmakers, 2023 ). Preregistration involves declaring a research plan (for example, aims/hypotheses, methods, and analyses) in a public registry before research outcomes are known (usually before data collection begins). A preregistration is a plan, not a prison: the goal is to make clear what was planned and what was not ( DeHaven, 2017 ). Deviations from preregistrations may be necessary or desirable. When deviations occur (and they almost always do), authors should describe them explicitly, and we strongly recommend using the  Psychological Science  preregistration deviation disclosure table ( link here ; modified based on Willroth & Atherton, 2023) and including it in the first Supplemental File. Authors should consider taking additional measures to reduce the risk of bias incurred by deviations, such as robustness checks (see Box 2 in Hardwicke & Wagenmakers, 2023 ).

As part of the Research Transparency Statement, Psychological Science requires that all research articles state upon submission whether each reported study was preregistered or not, and which core aspects of the study (research questions/hypotheses, methods, analyses) were preregistered. Authors should state when and where preregistrations were archived and whether any relevant data existed and/or had been observed at these times. The Research Transparency Statement must contain a publicly accessible persistent identifier (e.g., DOI) to all relevant preregistrations. Authors should state if any deviations from the preregistration occurred (they may refer to them as ‘major’ or ‘minor’) and refer readers to a preregistration deviation disclosure table in the first Supplemental File for details. All major deviations should also be reported clearly in the main text, wherever relevant.

Authors can use any trusted online registry to preregister their research. For beginners, we recommend following the Open Science Framework’s step-by-step workflow ( osf.io/prereg ). Note that for manuscripts submitted on or after January 1, 2024, “preregistered” badges will no longer be offered, but preregistration status and quality will be one factor in editors’ decisions, when relevant.

Sharing study materials ensures that research can be thoroughly evaluated and enables independent re-use of research outputs, helping the research community efficiently build upon previous studies. Authors must share all materials necessary for an independent researcher to evaluate and replicate each reported study. This typically includes all stimuli, manipulations, measures, or instruments, as well as details of procedures (e.g., instructions to participants, instructions to experimenters and/or confederates, experimenter and/or confederate scripts, instructions to coders, recruitment materials, consent forms) and custom experimental software. Screen recordings or video protocols can also be helpful ways to communicate study methods.

Upon submission, Psychological Science requires authors to make all original study materials publicly available in a trusted online repository , unless there are reasonable constraints . When unresolvable constraints exist, they must be stated and justified in the Research Transparency Statement. Authors should share files in any original proprietary formats (e.g., Qualtrics or Google Forms) as well as open format equivalents (e.g., plain text, PDF) to maximize accessibility. Materials should be accompanied by an open license (see “Licensing materials, data, and analysis script” below). Materials should be clearly documented to explain what they are and how they can be reused. The Research Transparency Statement must contain a publicly accessible persistent identifier (e.g., DOI) to all shared materials. Note that for manuscripts submitted on or after January 1, 2024, “open materials” badges will no longer be offered.

Data are the evidence that underlies scientific claims: sharing data enables independent verification and reuse, facilitating error correction, evidence synthesis, and novel discovery. Raw data refers to the original quantitative or qualitative recordings, e.g., handwriting in a paper questionnaire, responses on a computer keyboard, or physiological readings. Primary data refers to the first digital (and if necessary, anonymized) version of the raw data, otherwise unaltered. This includes data that is later excluded from the analysis. Raw and primary data may be equivalent, as when online survey software records responses in a digital format or some minimal processing may be necessary to convert the raw data into primary data (e.g., converting handwritten survey responses to digital format, or stripping participant IP addresses from the raw data file). Processed data has been altered in some way beyond digitization and anonymization (e.g., renaming columns, removing variables).

Upon submission, Psychological Science requires authors to make all primary research data publicly available in a trusted online repository, unless there are reasonable constraints. When unresolvable constraints exist, they must be stated and justified in the Research Transparency Statement. Where possible, authors should share data in an open format (e.g., csv) to maximize accessibility. Authors are encouraged to share processed ‘ready-to-analyze’ data in addition to primary data, as it is often easier for other researchers to work with. Data should be accompanied by an open license (see “Licensing materials, data, and analysis script” below) and clearly documented with a data dictionary or codebook file that clearly explains the contents of the data file(s), when the data were collected, and who collected the data. Note that for manuscripts submitted on or after January 1, 2024, “open data” badges will no longer be offered.

Analysis scripts

An analysis script is ideally computational code (e.g., R or Python), or software syntax (SPSS), but can also be detailed step-by-step instructions for analyses performed in point-and-click software. Analysis scripts provide a record of exactly how the analyses reported in the manuscript were performed. This enables an independent researcher to thoroughly evaluate the analyses and verify that the results are computationally reproducible (i.e., repeating the original analyses with the original data yields the reported results). Analysis scripts completely document all of the steps performed to transform the raw data into the primary/processed data (if any), and then into the numerical values reported in the manuscript (including reorganizing, filtering, transforming, analyzing, and visualizing the data).

Upon submission, Psychological Science requires authors to make all original analysis scripts publicly available in a trusted online repository, unless there are reasonable constraints . When unresolvable constraints exist, they must be stated and justified in the Research Transparency Statement. Authors must document all analysis steps necessary for an independent researcher to reproduce all numerical values in the manuscript from the raw data. Authors should ideally share analysis scripts in an open format (e.g., R, Python), though proprietary formats are acceptable for commonly used software (e.g., Matlab, SPSS). Analysis scripts should be accompanied by an open license (see “Licensing materials, data, and analysis script” below) and clearly documented to explain what they do and how an independent researcher should re-use them to reproduce all numerical values reported in the manuscript. The Research Transparency statement must contain a publicly accessible persistent identifier (e.g., DOI) to the analysis script(s). We also encourage researchers to document and share the software environment in which the analyses were performed using tools such as Docker, Binder, or Code Ocean.

All manuscripts submitted to Psychological Science are expected to be computationally reproducible. That is, a reader should be able to run the authors’ code on the authors’ data and reproduce the results reported in the manuscript, tables, and figures. As part of the STAR review after conditional acceptance, we may conduct computational reproducibility checks on randomly selected manuscripts, and we strongly encourage all authors to perform a reproducibility check within their own team before submitting a manuscript.

Authors who are confident that their work is computationally reproducible are encouraged to apply for the Computational Reproducibility Badge. You should apply for this badge if you believe that a competent third-party (a STAR editor) can reproduce the reported results within a reasonable amount of time (approximately one hour, not counting any compute time). To reach this standard, your data files and analysis scripts must be well-organized, clearly documented, and accompanied by a README file that explains step-by-step how to reproduce the results reported in the manuscript. Detailed guidance is available on the STAR resources website.

Licensing materials, data, and analysis scripts

Authors are strongly encouraged to share their materials, data, and analysis scripts under a Creative Commons CC0 license, a universal public domain declaration that ensures maximal reuse. Alternative re-use licenses may be acceptable, at the discretion of the Editors. Note that CC0 does not obviate cultural expectations that scholarly credit is given through citation ( Hrynaszkiewicz & Cockerill, 2012 ).

Transparency constraints and responsible sharing

In some cases, legal, ethical, or practical factors can complicate the sharing of some or all materials/data/analysis scripts. Authors are responsible for ensuring that sharing is handled responsibly, while also maximizing transparency as a scientific priority ( Meyer, 2018 ). We recognize that the optimal balance between these responsibilities is not always clear, and we are always ready to discuss potential constraints on transparency with authors.

Authors are expected to take steps to resolve or minimize constraints where possible — for example seeking permission to share from third-party data/materials providers, anonymizing datasets to resolve confidentiality concerns, or sharing the data/materials in a third-party repository that manages restricted access. When transparency constraints cannot be fully resolved, they must be stated and justified in the Research Transparency Statement. Supporting documentation should be provided where possible (for example a data use agreement or letter from the local ethics board outlining why the data/materials cannot be shared publicly).

If authors are using data/materials/analysis scripts from a third party source, they should seek permission to re-share those files alongside the current manuscript. If re-sharing is not possible, authors should clearly state in the Research Transparency Statement how other researchers can obtain the resources. Authors should also use appropriate citation standards to refer to any third party source in the text and reference section. Citation to third party resources should be accompanied by a persistent identifier (e.g., DOI).

Funding disclosures

Any sources of funding related to the research or manuscript must be disclosed. If there are no funding sources, this must be stated explicitly.

Conflict of interest disclosures

All authors must declare any conflicts of interest related to the research or manuscript. If there are no conflicts of interest, this must be stated explicitly. Conflicts of interest include not just financial conflicts, but any author’s role, relationship, or commitment that presents an actual or perceived threat to the integrity or independence of the research or its publication.

Artificial intelligence disclosures

Authors must disclose in the Research Transparency Statement whether they used any artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, such as large-language models (e.g., ChatGPT) during the research or production of the manuscript. Authors must adhere to the Sage policies on the use of generative artificial intelligence . The Editors and reviewers will judge whether the use of AI is appropriate.

Psychological Science encourages authors to consider the statistical approaches best suited to their aims. The editors recommend the use of a range of approaches, including hypothesis testing and estimation approaches. Among others,  frequentist (e.g., Null Hypothesis Significance Testing) or Bayesian approaches (e.g., Bayes factors) as well as machine learning can be appropriate when carried out with care and reported transparently.

When conducting multiple statistical tests on the same research question, authors should take into account the increased risk of false positive results, and correct for multiple comparisons where appropriate (see, e.g., Lakens, 2020 ).

For synthesizing evidence across multiple studies in the same manuscript, authors should be mindful of the increased risk of bias with common “internal meta-analysis” approaches ( Vosgerau et al. ).

Authors must include effect sizes (standardized or unstandardized) and a measure of uncertainty (e.g., confidence intervals) for their major results. In addition, authors should report distributional information for their key variables, ideally in figures (e.g., box plots with individual data points added). Fine-grained graphical presentations that show how data are distributed are often the most transparent way of communicating results. Please report and plot confidence intervals instead of standard deviations or standard errors around means of dependent variables, because confidence intervals convey more useful information.

Authors should investigate the extent to which statistical and/or causal assumptions of the model are met, and discuss implications of unmet assumptions.

Any claim about the absence of, for example, differences or associations must be supported by appropriate inferential statistics. For example, frequentist equivalence testing or Bayes factors (with appropriate equivalence margins or prior distributions, respectively) are well-suited approaches. When no supporting inferential statistics are reported, care must be taken to clearly communicate the absence of evidence.

Reporting Style for Statistical Results

Please report test statistics with two decimal points (e.g., t(34) = 5.67) and probability values with three decimal points. In addition, exact p values should be reported for all results greater than .001; p values below .001 should be described as “ p < .001.” Authors should be particularly attentive to APA style when typing statistical details (e.g., N s for chi-square tests, formatting of df s), and if special mathematical expressions are required, they should not be graphic objects but rather inserted with Word’s Equation Editor or similar.

Guidelines for Reporting Neuroimaging Data

Studies involving neuroimaging methods typically entail much larger numbers of measurements than those found in behavioral research, and require specialized frameworks for preprocessing and statistical analysis. The Organization for Human Brain Mapping has developed a set of documents outlining best practices for the reporting of these data types, which we recommend that authors follow. We refer authors to Nichols et al., 2016 and Pernet et al., 2020 for useful discussions of best practices in reporting of MRI and EEG/MEG research respectively.  Checklists for methods reporting are available for MRI (Table 4) and EEG/MEG (Tables 1 and 2).  All items listed as mandatory in those checklists should be reported in the main text or Supplemental Files.

Pre-registration of neuroimaging studies can be challenging due to the complexity of the methodology and data analysis, but authors are encouraged to pre-register at least a minimum set of details including: planned sample size, inclusion/exclusion criteria, planned hypotheses, anatomical regions of interest, and methods to be used for multiple comparison correction.

All whole-brain neuroimaging analyses must employ principled methods for the correction for multiple comparisons.  For region of interest (ROI)-based analyses, the process of ROI selection should be clearly stated in the main text; in general, ROIs should be selected prior to any analyses of the data and preferably pre-registered. Reports of ROI analyses should include effect size estimates. Any ROI-based analyses should be accompanied by whole-brain analyses for the same effect. A complete table of activation coordinates, together with their associated statistics, should be provided for each hypothesis test; such tables should typically be put in SOM.

The strongest submissions will report results for appropriately large samples and/or report a pre-registered replication study. There is no general rule for sample sizes, as they depend on the nature of the hypothesis being tested. For instance, a study concerning correlations between brain structure/function and behavioral measures will generally require samples in the hundreds to thousands of individuals due to small effect sizes ( Marek et al, 2022 ) and low reliability ( Elliott et al., 2020 ), whereas smaller samples are likely suitable for studies of task-specific brain activation, depending upon the effect size of interest. Prospective power analyses for fMRI ( Mumford, 2012 ) require unbiased estimates of effect sizes which are difficult to obtain without large prior samples and independent regions of interest; when these are not available, the sample size should be justified and preregistered.

Psychological Science will place emphasis on those functional neuroimaging studies that make a clear and compelling contribution to understanding psychological mechanisms. Therefore, authors should describe a clear linking proposition between the neuroscientific measurements and psychological theory.

Candidate Gene Research

Because genetic associations identified using candidate gene approaches have historically been largely irreproducible ( Hewitt, 2012 ), Psychological Science will only entertain candidate gene studies that are sufficiently powered to identify associations of a realistic magnitude at a genome-wide level of significance.

Research Using Machine Learning Methods

Research using machine learning methods should adhere to the Reporting Standards for ML-based Science (REFORMS) reporting checklist ( Kapoor et al., 2023 ). Computer code must be shared for all analyses.

Research Using Computational Models

Research involving the development or use of computational models should follow best practices outlined by Wilson and Collins (2019) .  Computer code must be shared for any new models that are developed.

Authors who use null hypothesis significance testing should run their manuscript through StatCheck — a statistical “spellchecker” that can detect inconsistencies between different components of inferential statistics (e.g., t value, df, and p). StatCheck is available in a free online app at http://statcheck.io/ .

Authorship implies significant participation in the research reported or in writing the manuscript, including participation in the design and/or interpretation of reported experiments or results, participation in the acquisition and/or analysis of data, and participation in the drafting and/or revising of the manuscript. All authors must agree to the order in which the authors are listed and must have read the final manuscript and approved its submission. They must also agree to take responsibility for the work in the event that its integrity or veracity is questioned.

Furthermore, as part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent, and fair peer review and publication process, APS journals have adopted the use of  CRediT  (Contributor Roles Taxonomy). CRediT is a high-level taxonomy, including 14 roles that can be used to represent the roles typically played by contributors to scientific scholarly output.

These roles describe the possible contributions to the published work:

Conceptualization : Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims

Methodology; Development or design of methodology; creation of models

Software : Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components

Validation Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/ reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs

Formal Analysis Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal

techniques to analyze or synthesize study data

Investigation : Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection

Resources : Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools

Data Curation: Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse

Writing – Original Draft : Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation)

Writing – Review & Editing: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision–including pre- or postpublication stages

Visualization : Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/ data presentation

Supervision : Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team

Project Administration: Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution

Funding Acquisition : Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.

The submitting author is responsible for listing the contributions of all authors at submission. All authors should agree to their individual contributions prior to submission.

In order to adhere to SAGE’s authorship criteria authors must have been responsible for  at least one  of the following  CRediT  roles:

• Conceptualization
• Methodology
• Formal Analysis
• Investigation

AND at least one of the following:

• Writing – Original Draft Preparation
• Writing – Review & Editing

Contributions will be published with the final article, and they should accurately reflect all contributions to the work. Any contributors with roles that do not constitute authorship (e.g., Supervision was the sole contribution) should be listed in the Acknowledgements.

SAGE is a supporting member of  ORCID , the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. We strongly encourage all authors and co-authors to use ORCID iDs during the peer-review process. If you already have an ORCID iD, please login to your account on SAGE Track and edit the account information to link to your ORCID iD. If you do not already have an ORCID iD, please login to your SAGE Track account to create your unique identifier and automatically add it to your profile. PLEASE NOTE: ORCID iDs must be linked to author accounts prior to manuscript acceptance or they will not be displayed upon publication. ORCID iDs cannot be linked during the copyediting phase.

The journal requires that for accepted manuscripts, figures be embedded within the main document near to where they are discussed in the text. A figure’s caption should be placed in the text just below the figure. For initial submissions, tables and figures may be placed at the end of the manuscript.

Authors who are submitting revisions should also upload separate figure files that adhere to the  APS Figure Format and Style Guidelines . Because the submission should be anonymized, files must not contain an author’s name. Submitting separate, production-quality files helps to facilitate timely publication should the manuscript ultimately be accepted.

Authors are free to submit certain types of Supplemental Files for online-only publication. If the manuscript is accepted for publication, such material will be published online on the publisher’s website via Figshare, linked to the article. Supplemental Files will not be copyedited or formatted; they will be posted online exactly as submitted.

The editorial team takes the adjective supplemental seriously. Supplemental Files should include the sort of material that enhances the reader’s understanding of an article but is not essential for understanding the article or evaluating the author’s claims. Supplemental Files should be uploaded during initial submission.

Contributors are encouraged to consult the  Contributor FAQ  before submitting manuscripts to  Psychological Science.

Accepted Manuscripts

All accepted manuscripts are published online (OnlineFirst) as soon as they reach their final copyedited, typeset, and corrected form, and each accepted article appears in a monthly print issue of  Psychological Science  as well as in the digital  This Week in Psychological Science  ( TWiPS ), which is distributed weekly to all APS members.

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Click through the PLOS taxonomy to find articles in your field.

For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click here .

Submission Guidelines

Related information for authors

• PLOS Writing Center
• Submission system
• Journal scope and publication criteria
• Getting started guide
• Guidelines for revisions
• Publication fees
• APC Support

Style and Format

Manuscript organization.

Manuscripts should be organized as follows. Instructions for each element appear below the list.

• Download sample title, author list, and affiliations page (PDF)
• Download sample manuscript body (PDF)

Parts of a Submission

Include a full title and a short title for the manuscript.

Titles should be written in sentence case (only the first word of the text, proper nouns, and genus names are capitalized). Avoid specialist abbreviations if possible. For clinical trials, systematic reviews, or meta-analyses, the subtitle should include the study design.

Author list

Author names and affiliations.

Enter author names on the title page of the manuscript and in the online submission system.

On the title page, write author names in the following order:

• First name (or initials, if used)
• Middle name (or initials, if used)
• Last name (surname, family name)

Each author on the list must have an affiliation. The affiliation includes department, university, or organizational affiliation and its location, including city, state/province (if applicable), and country. Authors have the option to include a current address in addition to the address of their affiliation at the time of the study. The current address should be listed in the byline and clearly labeled “current address.” At a minimum, the address must include the author’s current institution, city, and country.

If an author has multiple affiliations, enter all affiliations on the title page only. In the submission system, enter only the preferred or primary affiliation. Author affiliations will be listed in the typeset PDF article in the same order that authors are listed in the submission.

Corresponding author

The submitting author is automatically designated as the corresponding author in the submission system. The corresponding author is the primary contact for the journal office and the only author able to view or change the manuscript while it is under editorial consideration.

The corresponding author role may be transferred to another coauthor. However, note that transferring the corresponding author role also transfers access to the manuscript. (To designate a new corresponding author while the manuscript is still under consideration, watch the video tutorial below.)

Only one corresponding author can be designated in the submission system, but this does not restrict the number of corresponding authors that may be listed on the article in the event of publication. Whoever is designated as a corresponding author on the title page of the manuscript file will be listed as such upon publication. Include an email address for each corresponding author listed on the title page of the manuscript.

Consortia and group authorship

If a manuscript is submitted on behalf of a consortium or group, include its name in the manuscript byline. Do not add it to the author list in the submission system. You may include the full list of members in the Acknowledgments or in a supporting information file.

PubMed only indexes individual consortium or group author members listed in the article byline. If included, these individuals must qualify for authorship according to our criteria .

Author contributions

Provide at minimum one contribution for each author in the submission system. Use the CRediT taxonomy to describe each contribution. Read the policy and the full list of roles .

Contributions will be published with the final article, and they should accurately reflect contributions to the work. The submitting author is responsible for completing this information at submission, and we expect that all authors will have reviewed, discussed, and agreed to their individual contributions ahead of this time.

PLOS ONE will contact all authors by email at submission to ensure that they are aware of the submission.

Cover letter

Upload a cover letter as a separate file in the online system. The length limit is 1 page.

The cover letter should include the following information:

• Summarize the study’s contribution to the scientific literature
• Relate the study to previously published work
• Specify the type of article (for example, research article, systematic review, meta-analysis, clinical trial)
• Describe any prior interactions with PLOS regarding the submitted manuscript
• Suggest appropriate Academic Editors to handle your manuscript ( see the full list of Academic Editors)
• List any opposed reviewers

IMPORTANT: Do not include requests to reduce or waive publication fees in the cover letter. This information will be entered separately in the online submission system.

The title, authors, and affiliations should all be included on a title page as the first page of the manuscript file.  

The Abstract comes after the title page in the manuscript file. The abstract text is also entered in a separate field in the submission system.  

The Abstract should:

• Describe the main objective(s) of the study
• Explain how the study was done, including any model organisms used, without methodological detail
• Summarize the most important results and their significance
• Not exceed 300 words

Abstracts should not include:

• Abbreviations, if possible

Introduction

The introduction should:

• Provide background that puts the manuscript into context and allows readers outside the field to understand the purpose and significance of the study
• Define the problem addressed and why it is important
• Include a brief review of the key literature
• Note any relevant controversies or disagreements in the field
• Conclude with a brief statement of the overall aim of the work and a comment about whether that aim was achieved

Materials and Methods

The Materials and Methods section should provide enough detail to allow suitably skilled investigators to fully replicate your study. Specific information and/or protocols for new methods should be included in detail. If materials, methods, and protocols are well established, authors may cite articles where those protocols are described in detail, but the submission should include sufficient information to be understood independent of these references.

Supporting reproducibility with protocols

To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend and encourage you to make your protocols public. There are several options:

Protocols associated with Research Articles

Protocol documents may be uploaded as Supporting Information or linked from the Methods section of the article. For laboratory protocols, we recommend protocols.io. Include the DOI link in the Methods section of your manuscript using the following format: http://dx.doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.[PROTOCOL DOI]. This allows editors and reviewers to consult the detailed step-by-step protocol when evaluating your manuscript. You can choose to keep the protocol private on the protocols.io platform until your article is published—at which time it will be published automatically. 

Protocols published in their own right

PLOS ONE offers two options for publishing stand-alone protocol articles: Lab Protocols that describe reusable methodologies and Study Protocols that describe detailed plans and proposals for research projects. Specific guidelines apply to the submission of Lab Protocol and Study Protocol manuscripts. Read the detailed instructions for submitting Lab Protocols and Study Protocols .

Results, Discussion, Conclusions

These sections may all be separate, or may be combined to create a mixed Results/Discussion section (commonly labeled “Results and Discussion”) or a mixed Discussion/Conclusions section (commonly labeled “Discussion”). These sections may be further divided into subsections, each with a concise subheading, as appropriate. These sections have no word limit, but the language should be clear and concise.

Together, these sections should describe the results of the experiments, the interpretation of these results, and the conclusions that can be drawn.

Authors should explain how the results relate to the hypothesis presented as the basis of the study and provide a succinct explanation of the implications of the findings, particularly in relation to previous related studies and potential future directions for research.

PLOS ONE editorial decisions do not rely on perceived significance or impact, so authors should avoid overstating their conclusions. See the PLOS ONE Criteria for Publication for more information.

Acknowledgments

Those who contributed to the work but do not meet our authorship criteria should be listed in the Acknowledgments with a description of the contribution.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that anyone named in the Acknowledgments agrees to be named.

Any and all available works can be cited in the reference list. Acceptable sources include:

• Published or accepted manuscripts
• Manuscripts on preprint servers, providing the manuscript has a citable DOI or arXiv URL.

Do not cite the following sources in the reference list:

• Unavailable and unpublished work, including manuscripts that have been submitted but not yet accepted (e.g., “unpublished work,” “data not shown”). Instead, include those data as supplementary material or deposit the data in a publicly available database.
• Personal communications (these should be supported by a letter from the relevant authors but not included in the reference list)
• Submitted research should not rely upon retracted research. You should avoid citing retracted articles unless you need to discuss retracted work to provide historical context for your submitted research. If it is necessary to discuss retracted work, state the article’s retracted status in your article’s text and reference list.

Ensure that your reference list includes full and current bibliography details for every cited work at the time of your article’s submission (and publication, if accepted). If cited work is corrected, retracted, or marked with an expression of concern before your article is published, and if you feel it is appropriate to cite the work even in light of the post-publication notice, include in your manuscript citations and full references for both the affected article and the post-publication notice. Email the journal office if you have questions.

References are listed at the end of the manuscript and numbered in the order that they appear in the text. In the text, cite the reference number in square brackets (e.g., “We used the techniques developed by our colleagues [19] to analyze the data”). PLOS uses the numbered citation (citation-sequence) method and first six authors, et al.

Do not include citations in abstracts. 

Make sure the parts of the manuscript are in the correct order  before  ordering the citations.

​ Formatting references

PLOS uses the reference style outlined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), also referred to as the “Vancouver” style. Example formats are listed below. Additional examples are in the ICMJE sample references .

Journal name abbreviations should be those found in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) databases . 

Supporting information

Authors can submit essential supporting files and multimedia files along with their manuscripts. All supporting information will be subject to peer review. All file types can be submitted, but files must be smaller than 20 MB in size.

Authors may use almost any description as the item name for a supporting information file as long as it contains an “S” and number. For example, “S1 Appendix” and “S2 Appendix,” “S1 Table” and “S2 Table,” and so forth.  

Supporting information files are published exactly as provided, and are not copyedited.

Supporting information captions

List supporting information captions at the end of the manuscript file. Do not submit captions in a separate file.

The file number and name are required in a caption, and we highly recommend including a one-line title as well. You may also include a legend in your caption, but it is not required.

In-text citations

We recommend that you cite supporting information in the manuscript text, but this is not a requirement. If you cite supporting information in the text, citations do not need to be in numerical order.

Figures and tables

Do not include figures in the main manuscript file. Each figure must be prepared and submitted as an individual file.

Cite figures in ascending numeric order at first appearance in the manuscript file.

Figure captions

Figure captions must be inserted in the text of the manuscript, immediately following the paragraph in which the figure is first cited (read order). Do not include captions as part of the figure files themselves or submit them in a separate document.

At a minimum, include the following in your figure captions:

• A figure label with Arabic numerals, and “Figure” abbreviated to “Fig” (e.g. Fig 1, Fig 2, Fig 3, etc). Match the label of your figure with the name of the file uploaded at submission (e.g. a figure citation of “Fig 1” must refer to a figure file named “Fig1.tif”).
• A concise, descriptive title

The caption may also include a legend as needed.

Cite tables in ascending numeric order upon first appearance in the manuscript file.

Place each table in your manuscript file directly after the paragraph in which it is first cited (read order). Do not submit your tables in separate files.

Tables require a label (e.g., “Table 1”) and brief descriptive title to be placed above the table. Place legends, footnotes, and other text below the table. 

Statistical reporting

Manuscripts submitted to PLOS ONE are expected to report statistical methods in sufficient detail for others to replicate the analysis performed. Ensure that results are rigorously reported in accordance with community standards and that statistical methods employed are appropriate for the study design.

Consult the following resources for additional guidance:

• SAMPL guidelines , for general guidance on statistical reporting
• PLOS ONE guidelines , for clinical trials requirements
• PLOS ONE guidelines , for systematic review and meta-analysis requirements
• EQUATOR , for specific reporting guidelines for a range of other study types

Reporting of statistical methods

In the methods, include a section on statistical analysis that reports a detailed description of the statistical methods. In this section:

• List the name and version of any software package used, alongside any relevant references
• Describe technical details or procedures required to reproduce the analysis
• Provide the repository identifier for any code used in the analysis (See our code-sharing policy .)

Statistical reporting guidelines:

• Identify research design and independent variables as being between- or within-subjects
• Describe any analysis carried out to confirm the data meets the assumptions of the analysis performed (e.g. linearity, co-linearity, normality of the distribution).
• If data were transformed include this information, with a reason for doing so and a description of the transformation performed
• Provide details of how outliers were treated and your analysis, both with the full dataset and with the outliers removed
• If relevant, describe how missing/excluded data were handled
• Define the threshold for significance (alpha)
• If appropriate, provide sample sizes, along with a description of how they were determined. If a sample size calculation was performed, specify the inputs for power, effect size and alpha. Where relevant, report the number of independent replications for each experiment.
• For analyses of variance (ANOVAs), detail any post hoc tests that were performed
• Include details of any corrections applied to account for multiple comparisons. If corrections were not applied, include a justification for not doing so
• Describe all options for statistical procedures. For example, if t-tests were performed, state whether these were one- or two-tailed. Include details of the type of t-test conducted (e.g. one sample, within-/between-subjects).
• Report the alpha level used
• Discuss whether the variables were assessed for collinearity and interaction
• Describe the variable selection process by which the final model was developed (e.g., forward-stepwise; best subset). See SAMPL guidelines .
• For Bayesian analysis explain the choice of prior trial probabilities and how they were selected. Markov chain Monte Carlo settings should be reported.

Reporting of statistical results

Results must be rigorously and appropriately reported, in keeping with community standards.

• Units of measurement. Clearly define measurement units in all tables and figures.
• Properties of distribution. It should be clear from the text which measures of variance (standard deviation, standard error of the mean, confidence intervals) and central tendency (mean, median) are being presented.
• Regression analyses. Include the full results of any regression analysis performed as a supplementary file. Include all estimated regression coefficients, their standard error, p-values, and confidence intervals, as well as the measures of goodness of fit.
• Reporting parameters. Test statistics (F/t/r) and associated degrees of freedom should be provided. Effect sizes and confidence intervals should be reported where appropriate. If percentages are provided, the numerator and denominator should also be given.
• P-values. Report exact p-values for all values greater than or equal to 0.001. P-values less than 0.001 may be expressed as p < 0.001, or as exponentials in studies of genetic associations.
• Displaying data in plots. Format plots so that they accurately depict the sample distribution. 3D effects in plots can bias and hinder interpretation of values, so avoid them in cases where regular plots are sufficient to display the data.
• Open data. As explained in PLOS’s Data Policy , be sure to make individual data points, underlying graphs and summary statistics available at the time of publication. Data can be deposited in a repository or included within the Supporting Information files.

Data reporting

All data and related metadata underlying the findings reported in a submitted manuscript should be deposited in an appropriate public repository, unless already provided as part of the submitted article.

See instructions on providing underlying data to support blot and gel results .

Repositories may be either subject-specific (where these exist) and accept specific types of structured data, or generalist repositories that accept multiple data types. We recommend that authors select repositories appropriate to their field. Repositories may be subject-specific (e.g., GenBank for sequences and PDB for structures), general, or institutional, as long as DOIs or accession numbers are provided and the data are at least as open as CC BY. Authors are encouraged to select repositories that meet accepted criteria as trustworthy digital repositories, such as criteria of the Centre for Research Libraries or Data Seal of Approval. Large, international databases are more likely to persist than small, local ones.

To support data sharing and author compliance of the PLOS data policy, we have integrated our submission process with a select set of data repositories. The list is neither representative nor exhaustive of the suitable repositories available to authors. Current repository integration partners include  Dryad and FlowRepository . Please contact [email protected] to make recommendations for further partnerships.

Instructions for PLOS submissions with data deposited in an integration partner repository:

• Deposit data in the integrated repository of choice.
• Once deposition is final and complete, the repository will provide you with a dataset DOI (provisional) and private URL for reviewers to gain access to the data.
• Enter the given data DOI into the full Data Availability Statement, which is requested in the Additional Information section of the PLOS submission form. Then provide the URL passcode in the Attach Files section.

If you have any questions, please email us .

Accession numbers

All appropriate data sets, images, and information should be deposited in an appropriate public repository. See our list of recommended repositories .

Accession numbers (and version numbers, if appropriate) should be provided in the Data Availability Statement. Accession numbers or a citation to the DOI should also be provided when the data set is mentioned within the manuscript.

In some cases authors may not be able to obtain accession numbers of DOIs until the manuscript is accepted; in these cases, the authors must provide these numbers at acceptance. In all other cases, these numbers must be provided at full submission.

Identifiers

As much as possible, please provide accession numbers or identifiers for all entities such as genes, proteins, mutants, diseases, etc., for which there is an entry in a public database, for example:

• Entrez Gene
• Mouse Genome Database (MGD)
• Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM)

Identifiers should be provided in parentheses after the entity on first use.

Striking image

You can choose to upload a “Striking Image” that we may use to represent your article online in places like the journal homepage or in search results.

The striking image must be derived from a figure or supporting information file from the submission, i.e., a cropped portion of an image or the entire image. Striking images should ideally be high resolution, eye-catching, single panel images, and should ideally avoid containing added details such as text, scale bars, and arrows.

If no striking image is uploaded, we will designate a figure from the submission as the striking image.

Additional Information Requested at Submission

Financial disclosure statement.

This information should describe sources of funding that have supported the work. It is important to gather these details prior to submission because your financial disclosure statement cannot be changed after initial submission without journal approval. If your manuscript is published, your statement will appear in the Funding section of the article.

Enter this statement in the Financial Disclosure section of the submission form. Do not include it in your manuscript file.

The statement should include:

• Specific grant numbers
• Initials of authors who received each award
• Full names of commercial companies that funded the study or authors
• Initials of authors who received salary or other funding from commercial companies
• URLs to sponsors’ websites

Also state whether any sponsors or funders (other than the named authors) played any role in:

• Study design
• Data collection and analysis
• Decision to publish
• Preparation of the manuscript

If they had no role in the research, include this sentence: “The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”

If the study was unfunded, include this sentence as the Financial Disclosure statement: “The author(s) received no specific funding for this work."

Competing interests

This information should not be in your manuscript file; you will provide it via our submission system.

All potential competing interests must be declared in full. If the submission is related to any patents, patent applications, or products in development or for market, these details, including patent numbers and titles, must be disclosed in full.

Manuscripts disputing published work

For manuscripts disputing previously published work, it is  PLOS ONE  policy to invite a signed review by the disputed author during the peer review process. This procedure is aimed at ensuring a thorough, transparent, and productive review process.

If the disputed author chooses to submit a review, it must be returned in a timely fashion and contain a full declaration of all competing interests. The Academic Editor will consider any such reviews in light of the competing interest.

Authors submitting manuscripts disputing previous work should explain the relationship between the manuscripts in their cover letter, and will be required to confirm that they accept the conditions of this review policy before the manuscript is considered further.

Related manuscripts

Upon submission, authors must confirm that the manuscript, or any related manuscript, is not currently under consideration or accepted elsewhere. If related work has been submitted to  PLOS ONE  or elsewhere, authors must include a copy with the submitted article. Reviewers will be asked to comment on the overlap between related submissions.

We strongly discourage the unnecessary division of related work into separate manuscripts, and we will not consider manuscripts that are divided into “parts.” Each submission to  PLOS ONE  must be written as an independent unit and should not rely on any work that has not already been accepted for publication. If related manuscripts are submitted to  PLOS ONE , the authors may be advised to combine them into a single manuscript at the editor's discretion.

PLOS encourages authors to post preprints to accelerate the dissemination of research. Posting a manuscript on a preprint server does not impact consideration of the manuscript at any PLOS journal.

Authors posting preprints on  bioRxiv or medRxiv can choose to concurrently submit their manuscripts to relevant PLOS journals through the direct transfer service.

Authors submitting manuscripts in the life and health sciences to PLOS ONE  may choose to have PLOS forward their submission to bioRxiv or medRxiv, depending on the scope of the paper, for consideration for posting as a preprint.

Guidelines for Specific Study Types

Study design, reporting, and analyses are assessed against all relevant research and methodological technique standards held by the community. Guidelines for specific study types are outlined below.

Registered Reports

Submission and format requirements for Registered Report Protocols and Registered Reports are similar to those for a regular submission and may be specific to your study type. For instance, if your Registered Report Protocol submission is about a Clinical Trial or a Systematic Review, follow the appropriate guidelines.

For Registered Report Protocols:

• Provide enough methodological detail to make the study reproducible and replicable
• Confirm that data will be made available upon study completion in keeping with the PLOS Data policy ​
• Include ethical approval or waivers, if applicable
• Preliminary or pilot data may be included, but only if necessary to support the feasibility of the study or as a proof of principle 
• For meta-analyses or Clinical Trials, use the protocol-specific reporting guidelines PRISMA-P or SPIRIT respectively

For more guidance on format and presentation of a protocol, consult the sample template hosted by the Open Science Framework . Discipline-specific and study-specific templates are also available.

For Registered Report Research Articles:

• Report the results of all planned analyses and, if relevant, detail and justify all deviations from the protocol. 
• The manuscript may also contain exploratory, unplanned analyses.

Read more about Registered Report framework .

Human subjects research

Manuscripts should conform to the following reporting guidelines:

• Studies of diagnostic accuracy:  STARD
• Observational studies:  STROBE
• Microarray experiments:  MIAME
• Other types of health-related research: Consult the  EQUATOR  web site for appropriate reporting guidelines

Methods sections of papers on research using human subjects or samples must include ethics statements that specify:

• The name of the approving institutional review board or equivalent committee(s) . If approval was not obtained, the authors must provide a detailed statement explaining why it was not needed
• Why written consent could not be obtained
• That the Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved use of oral consent
• How oral consent was documented

For studies involving humans categorized by race/ethnicity, age, disease/disabilities, religion, sex/gender, sexual orientation, or other socially constructed groupings, authors should:

• Explicitly describe their methods of categorizing human populations
• Define categories in as much detail as the study protocol allows
• Justify their choices of definitions and categories, including for example whether any rules of human categorization were required by their funding agency
• Explain whether (and if so, how) they controlled for confounding variables such as socioeconomic status, nutrition, environmental exposures, or similar factors in their analysis

In addition, outmoded terms and potentially stigmatizing labels should be changed to more current, acceptable terminology. Examples: “Caucasian” should be changed to “white” or “of [Western] European descent” (as appropriate); “cancer victims” should be changed to “patients with cancer.”

For papers that include identifying, or potentially identifying, information, authors must download the Consent Form for Publication in a PLOS Journal , which the individual, parent, or guardian must sign once they have read the paper and been informed about the terms of PLOS open-access license. The signed consent form should not be submitted with the manuscript, but authors should securely file it in the individual's case notes and the methods section of the manuscript should explicitly state that consent authorization for publication is on file, using wording like:

The individual in this manuscript has given written informed consent (as outlined in PLOS consent form) to publish these case details.

For more information about  PLOS ONE  policies regarding human subjects research, see the  Publication Criteria  and  Editorial Policies .

Manuscripts describing observational clinical studies are subject to all policies regarding human research  and community standards for reporting observational research as outlined by the STROBE statement. Furthermore, authors submitting work of this nature should pay special attention to the following requirements:

• If the submitted manuscript is very similar to previous work, authors must provide a sound scientific rationale for the submitted work and clearly reference and discuss the existing literature.
• The sampling strategy and eligibility criteria of enrolled subjects should be described in sufficient detail.
• Sample size calculations should be justified with relevant inputs defined.
• Independent and dependent variables considered for statistical analysis should be clearly defined and justified.
• The validity and reliability testing of self-developed data collection tools should be reported.
• Conclusions should be appropriate for the study design, with indications on how the study results will contribute to the base of academic knowledge.

Clinical trials

Clinical trials are subject to all  policies regarding human research .  PLOS ONE  follows the  World Health Organization's (WHO) definition of a clinical trial :

All clinical trials must be registered in one of the publicly-accessible registries approved by the  WHO  or  ICMJE  (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors). Authors must provide the trial registration number. Prior disclosure of results on a clinical trial registry site will not affect consideration for publication. We reserve the right to inform authors' institutions or ethics committees, and to reject the manuscript, if we become aware of unregistered trials.

PLOS ONE  supports prospective trial registration (i.e. before participant recruitment has begun) as recommended by the ICMJE's  clinical trial registration policy .  Where trials were not publicly registered before participant recruitment began , authors must:

• Register all related clinical trials and confirm they have done so in the Methods section
• Explain in the Methods the reason for failing to register before participant recruitment

Clinical trials must be reported according to the relevant reporting guidelines, i.e.  CONSORT  for randomized controlled trials,  TREND  for non-randomized trials, and  other specialized guidelines  as appropriate. The intervention should be described according to the requirements of the  TIDieR checklist and guide . Submissions must also include the study protocol as supporting information, which will be published with the manuscript if accepted.

Authors of manuscripts describing the results of clinical trials must adhere to the  CONSORT  reporting guidelines appropriate to their trial design, available on the  CONSORT Statement web site . Before the paper can enter peer review, authors must:

• The name of the registry and the registration number must be included in the Abstract.
• Provide a copy of the trial protocol as approved by the ethics committee and a completed  CONSORT checklist  as supporting information (which will be published alongside the paper, if accepted). This should be named S1 CONSORT Checklist.
• Include the  CONSORT flow diagram  as the manuscript's “Fig 1”

Any deviation from the trial protocol must be explained in the paper. Authors must explicitly discuss informed consent in their paper, and we reserve the right to ask for a copy of the patient consent form.

The name of the registry and the registry number must be provided in the Abstract. If the trial is registered in more than one location, please provide all relevant registry names and numbers.

Lab Protocols

Lab Protocols consist of two interlinked components: a step-by-step protocol hosted on protocols.io , and a peer-reviewed article in  PLOS ONE that contextualises the protocol.

The PLOS ONE   article component must comply with the general PLOS ONE   submission guidelines (detailed above) and criteria for publication . In addition, the PLOS ONE article component should:

• Describe the value that the protocol adds to the published literature. Lab Protocols describing routine methods or extensions and modifications of routine methods that add little value to the published literature will not be considered for publication.
• Linking, in the Introduction section, to at least one supporting peer-reviewed publication in which the protocol was applied to generate data. or
• Providing validation or benchmarking data, which demonstrates that the underlying method achieves its intended purpose.
• Provide the step-by-step protocol as a supporting information (S1) file. 

We encourage you to post your protocol to the protocols.io platform before submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE . Posting your protocol prior to submission is not considered prior publication by PLOS ONE and will not affect your eligibility to publish a Lab Protocol.

Authors submitting a Lab Protocol can also use protocols.io’s protocol entry service  at no cost: the team at protocols.io will enter your protocol for you and format it in a way that takes advantage of the platform’s features. You will have an opportunity to review and make further changes before your protocol is shared with anyone else. 

If you would like to use protocols.io's protocol entry service in connection with a Lab Protocol submission, please contact [email protected] to request the customer code.

If you prefer to submit your manuscript to PLOS ONE before posting your protocol to protocols.io, then you must still provide your step-by-step protocol as a supporting information (S1) file in a format of your choosing. You will be expected to replace this file with a protocols.io PDF later in the editorial process.

Study Protocols

Study Protocols describe plans for conducting research projects and consist of a single article on  PLOS ONE .

Study Protocols must comply with the  PLOS ONE  general submission guidelines (detailed above in this article) and any guidelines specific to the related research study type. In addition, the protocol must:

• Relate to a research study that has not yet generated results.
• Be submitted before recruitment of participants or collection of data for the study is complete.
• Meet the same standards for ethics of experimentation and research integrity as the research study. If it involves human or animal subjects, cell lines or field sampling , or has potential biosafety implications , prior approval from the relevant ethics body must be obtained prior to submission. Please contact us if you have a valid reason for not obtaining approval. 

Additional prerequisites apply for these study types:

• The trial must be registered prior to submission of your protocol in one of the publicly accessible registries approved by the WHO or ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors).
• The name of the registry and the trial or study registration number must be included in the Abstract.
• A copy of the protocol that was approved by the ethics committee must be submitted as a supplementary information file. Please provide an additional English translation if the original document is not in English. Please note that the protocol will be published with the manuscript if accepted.
• A SPIRIT schedule of enrollment, interventions, and assessments must be included as the manuscript’s Figure 1, and a completed SPIRIT checklist must be uploaded as Supporting Information file S1.
• A completed PRISMA-P checklist must be provided as a supporting information (SI) file. See PRISMA-P Explanation and Elaboration for more information on completing your checklist.

Study Protocols must also comply with general PLOS ONE   criteria for publication and in addition you should:

• include the word “Protocol” in your Title.
• the aim, design, and settling
• the sample size calculation
• how data saturation will be determined (for qualitative studies)
• the characteristics of participants e.g., inclusion and exclusion criteria, sample selection criteria, variables to be measured, randomization and blinding criteria (where applicable), and how informed consent will be obtained 
• how materials will be selected and used e.g., where and how they will be sourced, the processes, interventions, or comparisons to be used, the outcomes to be measured, and when and how they will be measured
• the data management plan
• safety considerations
• the type of data and statistical analyses to be used
• the status and timeline of the study, including whether participant recruitment or data collection has begun
• where and when the data will be made available. See our Data Availability policy for more.
• include an analysis of preliminary or pilot data, only if it is necessary to support the feasibility of the study or as a proof of principle. This is optional.
• we encourage authors you to register with OSF and provide the your registration number in the Materials and Methods section. This is optional.
• optionally add any other SI files, figures or tables that elaborate or authenticate the protocol: e.g., any reporting checklists applicable to your study type.

Read the supporting information guidelines for more details about adding SI files.

Study Protocols are subject to the same editorial and peer review process as all other articles, and are eligible for both signed and published peer review .

You can expedite the review process by providing:

• proof of external funding. This is typically your funding approval letter and a list of the names and credentials of the funders who conducted the external peer review of the protocol. Include an English translation if needed.
• proof of ethics approval (if required). This is typically the approval or waiver letter from the relevant ethics body and a copy of the protocol approved by this body. 

The proof of external funding and approval or waiver letter are used for internal purposes and do not form part of the published Study Protocol. Expedited review is conducted by an internal Staff Editor only and bypasses the external review process. 

If the Study Protocol describes a replication study or involves re-analysis of published work, we will invite the author of the initial or replicated study to provide a signed review. 

We encourage you to share your Study Protocol with other researchers, either before or after submission. You can publish it on your website or  protocols.io , or submit it for posting on  medRxiv  or another preprint server.

Animal research

All research involving vertebrates or cephalopods must have approval from the authors' Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) or equivalent ethics committee(s), and must have been conducted according to applicable national and international guidelines. Approval must be received prior to beginning research.

Manuscripts reporting animal research must state in the Methods section:

• The full name of the relevant ethics committee that approved the work, and the associated permit number(s).
• Where ethical approval is not required, the manuscript should include a clear statement of this and the reason why. Provide any relevant regulations under which the study is exempt from the requirement for approval.
• Relevant details of steps taken to ameliorate animal suffering.

This study was carried out in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. The protocol was approved by the Committee on the Ethics of Animal Experiments of the University of Minnesota (Protocol Number: 27-2956). All surgery was performed under sodium pentobarbital anesthesia, and all efforts were made to minimize suffering.

Authors should always state the organism(s) studied in the Abstract. Where the study may be confused as pertaining to clinical research, authors should also state the animal model in the title.

To maximize reproducibility and potential for re-use of data, we encourage authors to follow the Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines for all submissions describing laboratory-based animal research and to upload a completed  ARRIVE Guidelines Checklist  to be published as supporting information.

Non-human primates

Manuscripts describing research involving non-human primates must report details of husbandry and animal welfare in accordance with the recommendations of the Weatherall report, The use of non-human primates in research , including:

• Information about housing, feeding, and environmental enrichment.
• Steps taken to minimize suffering, including use of anesthesia and method of sacrifice, if appropriate.

Random source animals

Manuscripts describing studies that use random source (e.g. Class B dealer-sourced in the USA), shelter, or stray animals will be subject to additional scrutiny and may be rejected if sufficient ethical and scientific justification for the study design is lacking.

Unacceptable euthanasia methods and anesthetic agents

Manuscripts reporting use of a euthanasia method(s) classified as unacceptable by the American Veterinary Medical Association or use of an anesthesia method(s) that is widely prohibited (e.g., chloral hydrate, ether, chloroform) must include at the time of initial submission, scientific justification for use in the specific study design, as well as confirmation of approval for specific use from their animal research ethics committee. These manuscripts may be subject to additional ethics considerations prior to publication.

Humane endpoints

Manuscripts reporting studies in which death of a regulated animal (vertebrate, cephalopod) is a likely outcome or a planned experimental endpoint, must comprehensively report details of study design, rationale for the approach, and methodology, including consideration of humane endpoints. This applies to research that involves, for instance, assessment of survival, toxicity, longevity, terminal disease, or high rates of incidental mortality.

Full details of humane endpoints use must be reported for a study to be reproducible and for the results to be accurately interpreted.

For studies in which death of an animal is an outcome or a planned experimental endpoint, authors should include the following information in the Methods section of the manuscript:

• The specific criteria (i.e. humane endpoints) used to determine when animals should be euthanized.
• The duration of the experiment.
• The numbers of animals used, euthanized, and found dead (if any); the cause of death for all animals.
• How frequently animal health and behavior were monitored.
• All animal welfare considerations taken, including efforts to minimize suffering and distress, use of analgesics or anaesthetics, or special housing conditions.

If humane endpoints were not used, the manuscript should report:

• A scientific justification for the study design, including the reasons why humane endpoints could not be used, and discussion of alternatives that were considered.
• Whether the institutional animal ethics committee specifically reviewed and approved the anticipated mortality in the study design.

Observational and field studies

Methods sections for submissions reporting on any type of field study must include ethics statements that specify:

• Permits and approvals obtained for the work, including the full name of the authority that approved the study; if none were required, authors should explain why
• Whether the land accessed is privately owned or protected
• Whether any protected species were sampled
• Full details of animal husbandry, experimentation, and care/welfare, where relevant

Paleontology and archaeology research

Manuscripts reporting paleontology and archaeology research must include descriptions of methods and specimens in sufficient detail to allow the work to be reproduced. Data sets supporting statistical and phylogenetic analyses should be provided, preferably in a format that allows easy re-use.  Read the policy .

Specimen numbers and complete repository information, including museum name and geographic location, are required for publication. Locality information should be provided in the manuscript as legally allowable, or a statement should be included giving details of the availability of such information to qualified researchers.

If permits were required for any aspect of the work, details should be given of all permits that were obtained, including the full name of the issuing authority. This should be accompanied by the following statement:

If no permits were required, please include the following statement:

Manuscripts describing paleontology and archaeology research are subject to the following policies:

• Sharing of data and materials.  Any specimen that is erected as a new species, described, or figured must be deposited in an accessible, permanent repository (i.e., public museum or similar institution). If study conclusions depend on specimens that do not fit these criteria, the article will be rejected under  PLOS ONE 's  data availability criterion .
• Ethics.   PLOS ONE   will not publish research on specimens that were obtained without necessary permission or were illegally exported.

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses

A systematic review paper, as defined by The Cochrane Collaboration , is a review of a clearly formulated question that uses explicit, systematic methods to identify, select, and critically appraise relevant research, and to collect and analyze data from the studies that are included in the review. These reviews differ substantially from narrative-based reviews or synthesis articles. Statistical methods (meta-analysis) may or may not be used to analyze and summarize the results of the included studies.

Reports of systematic reviews and meta-analyses should include a completed PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) checklist and flow diagram to accompany the main text. Blank templates are available here:

• Checklist: PDF or Word document
• Flow diagram: PDF or Word document

Authors must also state in their “Methods” section whether a protocol exists for their systematic review, and if so, provide a copy of the protocol as supporting information and provide the registry number in the abstract.

If your article is a systematic review or a meta-analysis you should:

• State this in your cover letter
• Select “Research Article” as your article type when submitting
• Include the PRISMA flow diagram as Fig 1 (required where applicable)
• Include the PRISMA checklist as supporting information

Meta-analysis of genetic association studies

Manuscripts reporting a meta-analysis of genetic association studies must report results of value to the field and should be reported according to the guidelines presented in Systematic Reviews of Genetic Association Studies  by Sagoo  et al.

On submission, authors will be asked to justify the rationale for the meta-analysis and how it contributes to the base of scientific knowledge in the light of previously published results. Authors will also be asked to complete a  checklist (DOCX)  outlining information about the justification for the study and the methodology employed. Meta-analyses that replicate published studies will be rejected if the authors do not provide adequate justification.

Personal data from third-party sources

For all studies using personal data from internet-based and other third-party sources (e.g., social media, blogs, other internet sources, mobile phone companies), data must be collected and used according to company/website Terms and Conditions, with appropriate permissions. All data sources must be acknowledged clearly in the  Materials and Methods section .

In the Ethics Statement, authors should declare any potential risks to individuals or individual privacy, or affirm that in their assessment, the study posed no such risks. In addition, the following Ethics and Data Protection requirements must be met.

For interventional studies , which impact participants’ experiences or data, the study design must have been prospectively approved by an Ethics Committee, and informed consent is required. The Ethics Committee may waive the requirement for approval and/or consent.

For observational studies  in which personal experiences and accounts are not manipulated, consultation with an Ethics or Data Protection Committee is recommended. Additional requirements apply in the following circumstances:

• If information used could threaten personal privacy or damage the reputation of individuals whose data are used, an Ethics Committee should be consulted and informed consent obtained or specifically addressed.
• If authors accessed any personal identifying information, an Ethics or Data Protection Committee should oversee data anonymization. If data were anonymized and/or aggregated before access and analysis, informed consent is generally not required.

Authors reporting research using cell lines should state when and where they obtained the cells, giving the date and the name of the researcher, cell line repository, or commercial source (company) who provided the cells, as appropriate.

Authors must also include the following information for each cell line:

For  de novo  (new) cell lines , including those given to the researchers as a gift, authors must follow our policies for  human subjects research  or  animal research , as appropriate. The ethics statement must include:

• Details of institutional review board or ethics committee approval; AND
• For human cells, confirmation of written informed consent from the donor, guardian, or next of kin

For established cell lines , the Methods section should include:

• A reference to the published article that first described the cell line; AND/OR
• The cell line repository or company the cell line was obtained from, the catalogue number, and whether the cell line was obtained directly from the repository/company or from another laboratory

Authors should check established cell lines using the  ICLAC Database of Cross-contaminated or Misidentified Cell Lines  to confirm they are not misidentified or contaminated. Cell line authentication is recommended – e.g., by karyotyping, isozyme analysis, or short tandem repeats (STR) analysis – and may be required during peer review or after publication.

Blots and gels

Please review PLOS ONE ’s requirements for reporting blot and gel results and providing the underlying raw images .

Manuscripts reporting experiments using antibodies should include the following information:

• The name of each antibody, a description of whether it is monoclonal or polyclonal, and the host species.
• The commercial supplier or source laboratory.
• The catalogue or clone number and, if known, the batch number.
• The antigen(s) used to raise the antibody.
• For established antibodies, a stable public identifier from the Antibody Registry .

The manuscript should also report the following experimental details:

• The final antibody concentration or dilution.
• A reference to the validation study if the antibody was previously validated. If not, provide details of how the authors validated the antibody for the applications and species used. 

Small and macromolecule crystal data

Manuscripts reporting new and unpublished three-dimensional structures must include sufficient supporting data and detailed descriptions of the methodologies used to allow the reproduction and validation of the structures. All novel structures must have been deposited in a community endorsed database prior to submission (please see our list of recommended repositories ).

Small molecule single crystal data

Authors reporting X-Ray crystallographic structures of small organic, metal-organic, and inorganic molecules must deposit their data with the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC), the Inorganic Crystal Structure Database (ICSD), or similar community databases providing a recognized validation functionality. Authors are also required to include the relevant structure reference numbers within the main text (e.g. the CCDC ID number), as well as the crystallographic information files (.cif format) as Supplementary Information, along with the checkCIF validation reports that can be obtained via the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr).

Macromolecular structures

Authors reporting novel macromolecular structures must have deposited their data prior to initial submission with the Worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB), the Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank (BMRB), the Electron Microscopy Data Bank (EMDB), or other community databases providing a recognized validation functionality. Authors must include the structure reference numbers within the main text and submit as Supplementary Information the official validation reports from these databases.

Methods, software, databases, and tools

PLOS ONE  will consider submissions that present new methods, software, databases, or tools as the primary focus of the manuscript if they meet the following criteria:

Software submissions

Manuscripts whose primary purpose is the description of new software must provide full details of the algorithms designed. Describe any dependencies on commercial products or operating system. Include details of the supplied test data and explain how to install and run the software. A brief description of enhancements made in the major releases of the software may also be given. Authors should provide a direct link to the deposited software from within the paper.

Database submissions

For descriptions of databases, provide details about how the data were curated, as well as plans for long-term database maintenance, growth, and stability. Authors should provide a direct link to the database hosting site from within the paper.

New taxon names

Zoological names.

When publishing papers that describe a new zoological taxon name, PLOS aims to comply with the requirements of the  International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) . Effective 1 January 2012, the ICZN considers an online-only publication to be legitimate if it meets the criteria of archiving and is registered in ZooBank, the ICZN's official registry.

For proper registration of a new zoological taxon, we require two specific statements to be included in your manuscript.

In the  Results  section, the globally unique identifier (GUID), currently in the form of a Life Science Identifier (LSID), should be listed under the new species name, for example:

You will need to contact  Zoobank  to obtain a GUID (LSID). Please do this as early as possible to avoid delay of publication upon acceptance of your manuscript. It is your responsibility to provide us with this information so we can include it in the final published paper.

Please also insert the following text into the  Methods  section, in a sub-section to be called “Nomenclatural Acts”:

All PLOS articles are deposited in  LOCKSS . If your institute, or those of your co-authors, has its own repository, we recommend that you also deposit the published online article there and include the name in your article.

Botanical names

When publishing papers that describe a new botanical taxon, PLOS aims to comply with the requirements of the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN). The following guidelines for publication in an online-only journal have been agreed such that any scientific botanical name published by us is considered effectively published under the rules of the Code. Please note that these guidelines differ from those for zoological nomenclature, and apply only to seed plants, ferns, and lycophytes.

Effective January 2012, the description or diagnosis of a new taxon can be in either Latin or English. This does not affect the requirements for scientific names, which are still to be Latin.

Also effective January 2012, the electronic PDF represents a published work according to the ICN for algae, fungi, and plants. Therefore the new names contained in the electronic publication of PLOS article are effectively published under that Code from the electronic edition alone, so there is no longer any need to provide printed copies.

Additional information describing recent changes to the Code can be found  here .

For proper registration of the new taxon, we require two specific statements to be included in your manuscript.

Journal staff will contact IPNI to obtain the GUID (LSID) after your manuscript is accepted for publication, and this information will then be added to the manuscript during the production phase

In the  Methods  section, include a sub-section called “Nomenclature” using the following wording:

Fungal names

When publishing papers that describe a new botanical taxon, PLOS aims to comply with the requirements of the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN). The following guidelines for publication in an online-only journal have been agreed such that any scientific botanical name published by us is considered effectively published under the rules of the Code. Please note that these guidelines differ from those for zoological nomenclature.

You will need to contact either  Mycobank  or  Index Fungorum  to obtain the GUID (LSID). Please do this as early as possible to avoid delay of publication upon acceptance of your manuscript. It is your responsibility to provide us with this information so we can include it in the final published paper. Effective January 2013, all papers describing new fungal species must reference the identifier issued by a recognized repository in the protologue in order to be considered effectively published.

In the  Methods  section, include a sub-section called “Nomenclature” using the following wording. Note that this example is for taxon names submitted to MycoBank; please substitute appropriately if you have submitted to Index Fungorum using the prefix http://www.indexfungorum.org/Names/NamesRecord.asp?RecordID=.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research studies use non-quantitative methods to address a defined research question that may not be accessible by quantitative methods, such as people's interpretations, experiences, and perspectives. The analysis methods are explicit, systematic, and reproducible, but the results do not involve numerical values or use statistics. Examples of qualitative data sources include, but are not limited to, interviews, text documents, audio/video recordings, and free-form answers to questionnaires and surveys.

Qualitative research studies should be reported in accordance to the  Consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ) checklist  or Standards for reporting qualitative research (SRQR) checklist . Further reporting guidelines can be found in the Equator Network's  Guidelines for reporting qualitative research .

You may be eligible for APC support

Many institutional partners globally have publishing agreements with PLOS to allow their corresponding authors to publish with reduced or no APCs. To determine if your corresponding author is eligible, please visit our institutional partners page  to determine what kind of agreement your institution has with PLOS.

If your corresponding author is affiliated with a participating institution, they must follow the instructions below to demonstrate eligibility.

If your corresponding author is not from a participating institution and requires assistance paying publishing fees, please consider applying for a fee waiver at submission.

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Formatting guide

This guide describes how to prepare contributions for submission. We recommend you read this in full if you have not previously submitted a contribution to Nature . We also recommend that, before submission, you familiarize yourself with Nature ’s style and content by reading the journal, either in print or online, particularly if you have not submitted to the journal recently.

Formats for Nature contributions

Articles are the main format for original research contributions to Nature . In addition, Nature publishes other submitted material as detailed below.

Articles are original reports whose conclusions represent a substantial advance in understanding of an important problem and have immediate, far-reaching implications. In print, physical sciences papers do not normally exceed 6 pages on average, and biological, clinical and social-sciences papers do not normally exceed 8 pages on average. However, the final print length is at the editor’s discretion.

Articles start with a fully referenced summary paragraph, ideally of no more than 200 words, which is separate from the main text and avoids numbers, abbreviations, acronyms or measurements unless essential. It is aimed at readers outside the discipline. This summary paragraph should be structured as follows: 2-3 sentences of basic-level introduction to the field; a brief account of the background and rationale of the work; a statement of the main conclusions (introduced by the phrase 'Here we show' or its equivalent); and finally, 2-3 sentences putting the main findings into general context so it is clear how the results described in the paper have moved the field forwards. Please refer to our annotated example   to see how the summary paragraph should be constructed.

The typical length of a 6-page article with 4 modest display items (figures and tables) is 2500 words (summary paragraph plus body text). The typical length of an 8-page article with 5-6 modest display items is 4300 words. A ‘modest’ display item is one that, with its legend, occupies about a quarter of a page (equivalent to ~270 words). If a composite figure (with several panels) needs to occupy at least half a page in order for all the elements to be visible, the text length may need to be reduced accordingly to accommodate such figures. Keep in mind that essential but technical details can be moved into the Methods or Supplementary Information.

As a guideline, articles typically have no more than 50 references. (There is no such constraint on any additional references associated with Methods or Supplementary Information.)

Sections are separated with subheadings to aid navigation. Subheadings may be up to 40 characters (including spaces).

Word counts refer to the text of the paper. Title, author list, acknowledgements and references are not included in total word counts.

Matters Arising and Corrections

Matters Arising are exceptionally interesting or important comments and clarifications on original research papers or other peer-reviewed material published within the past 18 months in Nature . They are published online but not in print.

For further details of and instructions for how to submit such comments on peer-reviewed material published in Nature — or to notify editors of the potential need for a correction — please consult our Matters Arising page.

Other contributions to Nature

Please access the other submitted material pages for further details on any of the contribution types below:

News and Comment

Correspondence

Books & Arts

News & Views

Insights, Reviews and Perspectives

Technology Features

The editorial process

See this section for an explanation of Nature 's editorial criteria for publication, refereeing policy and how editors handle papers after submission. Submission to a Nature journal is taken by the journal to mean that all the listed authors have agreed to all of the contents. See authorship policy for more details.

Presubmission enquiries

If you wish to enquire whether your Article might be suitable for consideration by Nature , please use our online presubmission enquiry service . All presubmission enquiries must include a cover paragraph to the editor stating the interest to a broad scientific readership, a fully referenced summary paragraph, and a reference list.

Readability

Nature is an international journal covering all the sciences. Contributions should therefore be written clearly and simply so that they are accessible to readers in other disciplines and to readers for whom English is not their first language. Thus, technical jargon should be avoided as far as possible and clearly explained where its use is unavoidable. Abbreviations, particularly those that are not standard, should also be kept to a minimum. The background, rationale and main conclusions of the study should be clearly explained. Titles and abstracts in particular should be written in language that will be readily intelligible to any scientist. Essential but specialized terms should be explained concisely but not didactically.

For gene, protein and other specialized names authors can use their preferred terminology so long as it is in current use by the community, but they must give all known names for the entity at first use in the paper. Nature prefers authors to use internationally agreed nomenclature. Papers containing new or revised formal taxonomic nomenclature for animals, whether living or extinct, are accepted conditional on the provision of LSIDs (Life Science Identifiers) by means of registration of such nomenclature with ZooBank, the proposed online registration system for the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN).

Even though no paper will be rejected because of poor language, non–native English speakers occasionally receive feedback from editors and reviewers regarding language and grammar usage in their manuscripts. You may wish to consider asking colleagues to read your manuscript and/or to use a professional editing service such as those provided by our affiliates Nature Research Editing Service or American Journal Experts . You can also get a fast, free grammar check of your manuscript that takes into account all aspects of readability in English. Please note that the use of a language editing service is not a requirement for publication in Nature .

Nature 's editors provide detailed advice about the expected print length when asking for the final version of the manuscript. Nature 's editors often suggest revised titles and rewrite the summary paragraphs of Articles so the conclusions are clear to a broad readership.

After acceptance, Nature 's subeditors (copyeditors) ensure that the text and figures are readable and clear to those outside the field, and edit papers into Nature 's house style. They pay particular attention to summary paragraphs, overall clarity, figures, figure legends and titles.

Proofs are sent before publication; authors are welcome to discuss proposed changes with Nature 's subeditors, but Nature reserves the right to make the final decision about matters of style and the size of figures.

A useful set of articles providing general advice about writing and submitting scientific papers can be found on the SciDev.Net website.

Format of Articles

Contributions should be double-spaced and written in English (spellings as in the Oxford English Dictionary ).

Contributions should be organized in the sequence: title, authors, affiliations (plus present addresses), bold first paragraph, main text, main references, tables, figure legends, methods (including separate data and code availability statements), methods references, acknowledgements, author contributions, competing interest declaration, additional information (containing supplementary information line (if any) and corresponding author line), extended data figure/table legends. In order to facilitate the review process, for initial submissions we encourage authors to present the manuscript text and figures together in a single file (Microsoft Word or PDF, up to 30 MB in size). The figures may be inserted within the text at the appropriate positions or grouped at the end, and each figure legend should be presented together with its figure. Also, please include line numbers within the text.

Titles do not exceed two lines in print. This equates to 75 characters (including spaces). Titles do not normally include numbers, acronyms, abbreviations or punctuation. They should include sufficient detail for indexing purposes but be general enough for readers outside the field to appreciate what the paper is about.

An uninterrupted page of text contains about 1250 words.

A typical 6-page Article contains about 2,500 words of text and, additionally, 4 modest display items (figures and/or tables) with brief legends, reference list and online-only methods section if applicable. A composite figure (with several panels) usually needs to take about half a page, equivalent to about 600 words, in order for all the elements to be visible (see section 5.9 for instructions on sizing figures).

A typical 8-page Article contains about 4300 words of text and, additionally, 5-6 modest display items (figures and/or tables) with brief legends, reference list and online-only methods section if applicable. A composite figure (with several panels) usually needs to take about half a page, equivalent to about 600 words, in order for all the elements to be visible (see section 5.9 for instructions on sizing figures).

Authors of contributions that significantly exceed the limits stated here (or as specified by the editor) will have to shorten their papers before acceptance, inevitably delaying publication.

Nature requires authors to specify the contribution made by their co-authors in the end notes of the paper (see section 5.5). If authors regard it as essential to indicate that two or more co-authors are equal in status, they may be identified by an asterisk symbol with the caption ‘These authors contributed equally to this work’ immediately under the address list. If more than three co-authors are equal in status, this should be indicated in the author contributions statement. Present addresses appear immediately below the author list (below the footnote rule at the bottom of the first page) and may be identified by a dagger symbol; all other essential author-related explanation is placed in the acknowledgements.

Our preferred format for text is Microsoft Word, with the style tags removed.

TeX/LaTeX: If you have prepared your paper using TeX/LaTeX, we will need to convert this to Word after acceptance, before your paper can be typeset. All textual material of the paper (including references, tables, figure captions, online methods, etc.) should be included as a single .tex file.

We prefer the use of a ‘standard’ font, preferably 12-point Times New Roman. For mathematical symbols, Greek letters and other special characters, use normal text or Symbol font. Word Equation Editor/MathType should be used only for formulae that cannot be produced using normal text or Symbol font.

The ‘Methods’ section is in the main text file, following the figure legends. This Methods section will appear in the PDF and in the full-text (HTML) version of the paper online, but will not appear in the printed issue. The Methods section should be written as concisely as possible but should contain all elements necessary to allow interpretation and replication of the results. As a guideline, the Methods section does not typically exceed 3,000 words. To increase reproducibility, authors are encouraged to deposit a detailed description of protocols used in their study in a protocol sharing platform of their choice. Springer Nature’s protocols.io is a free and open service designed to help researchers share experimental know-how. Protocols deposited by the authors in www.protocols.io will be linked to the online Methods section upon publication

Detailed descriptions of methods already published should be avoided; a reference number can be provided to save space, with any new addition or variation stated.

The Methods section should be subdivided by short bold headings referring to methods used and we encourage the inclusion of specific subsections for statistics, reagents and animal models. If further references are included in this section their numbering should continue from the end of the last reference number in the rest of the paper and they are listed after the Methods section.

Please provide separate Data Availability and Code Availability statements after the main text statements and before the Extended Data legends; detailed guidance can be found in our data availability and data citations policy . Certain data types must be deposited in an appropriate public structured data depository (details are available here ), and the accession number(s) provided in the manuscript. Full access is required at the time of publication. Should full access to data be required for peer review, authors must provide it.

The Methods section cannot contain figures or tables (essential display items should be included in the Extended Data or exceptionally in the Supplementary Information).

References are each numbered, ordered sequentially as they appear in the text, tables, boxes, figure legends, Methods, Extended Data tables and Extended Data figure legends.

When cited in the text, reference numbers are superscript, not in brackets unless they are likely to be confused with a superscript number.

Do not use linked fields (produced by EndNote and similar programs). Please use the one-click button provided by EndNote to remove EndNote codes before saving your file.

As a guideline, Articles allow up to 50 references in the main text if needed and within the average page budget. Only one publication can be listed for each number. Additional references for Methods or Supplementary Information are not included in this count.

Only articles that have been published or accepted by a named publication, or that have been uploaded to a recognized preprint server (for example, arXiv, bioRxiv), should be in the reference list; papers in preparation should be mentioned in the text with a list of authors (or initials if any of the authors are co-authors of the present contribution).

Published conference abstracts, numbered patents, preprints on recognized servers, papers in press, and research datasets that have been assigned a digital object identifier may be included in reference lists, but text, grant details and acknowledgements may not. (An exception is the highlighted references which we ask authors of Reviews, Perspectives and Insights articles to provide.)

All authors should be included in reference lists unless there are more than five, in which case only the first author should be given, followed by ‘et al.’.

Please follow the style below in the published edition of Nature in preparing reference lists.

Authors should be listed surname first, followed by a comma and initials of given names.

Titles of all cited articles are required. Titles of articles cited in reference lists should be in upright, not italic text; the first word of the title is capitalized, the title written exactly as it appears in the work cited, ending with a full stop. Book titles are italic with all main words capitalized. Journal titles are italic and abbreviated according to common usage. Volume numbers are bold. The publisher and city of publication are required for books cited. (Refer to published papers in Nature for details.)

Research datasets may be cited in the reference list if they have been assigned digital object identifiers (DOIs) and include authors, title, publisher (repository name), identifier (DOI expressed as a URL). Example: Hao, Z., AghaKouchak, A., Nakhjiri, N. & Farahmand, A. Global Integrated Drought Monitoring and Prediction System (GIDMaPS) data sets. figshare http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.853801 (2014).

Recognized preprints may be cited in the reference list. Example: Babichev, S. A., Ries, J. & Lvovsky, A. I. Quantum scissors: teleportation of single-mode optical states by means of a nonlocal single photon. Preprint at http://arXiv.org/quant-ph/0208066 (2002).

References to web-only journals should give authors, article title and journal name as above, followed by URL in full - or DOI if known - and the year of publication in parentheses.

References to websites should give authors if known, title of cited page, URL in full, and year of posting in parentheses.

End notes are brief and follow the Methods (or Methods References, if any).

Acknowledgements should be brief, and should not include thanks to anonymous referees and editors, inessential words, or effusive comments. A person can be thanked for assistance, not “excellent” assistance, or for comments, not “insightful” comments, for example. Acknowledgements can contain grant and contribution numbers.

Author Contributions: Authors are required to include a statement to specify the contributions of each co-author. The statement can be up to several sentences long, describing the tasks of individual authors referred to by their initials. See the authorship policy page for further explanation and examples.

Competing interests  statement.

Additional Information: Authors should include a set of statements at the end of the paper, in the following order:

Papers containing Supplementary Information contain the statement: “Supplementary Information is available for this paper.”

A sentence reading "Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to XX.” Nature expects this identified author to respond to readers’ enquiries and requests for materials, and to coordinate the handling of any other matters arising from the published contribution, including corrections complaints. The author named as corresponding author is not necessarily the senior author, and publication of this author’s name does not imply seniority. Authors may include more than one e-mail address if essential, in which event Nature will communicate with the first-listed address for any post-publication matters, and expect that author to coordinate with the other co-authors.

Peer review information includes the names of reviewers who agree to be cited and is completed by Nature staff during proofing.

A sentence reading “Reprints and permissions information is available at www.nature.com/reprints.”

Life sciences and behavioural & social sciences reporting guidelines

To improve the transparency of reporting and the reproducibility of published results, authors of life sciences and behavioural & social sciences Articles must provide a completed Reporting Summary that will be made available to editors and reviewers during manuscript assessment. The Reporting Summary will be published with all accepted manuscripts.

Please note: because of the advanced features used in these forms, you must use Adobe Reader to open the documents and fill them out.

Guidance and resources related to the use and reporting of statistics are available here .

Tables should each be presented on a separate page, portrait (not landscape) orientation, and upright on the page, not sideways.

Tables have a short, one-line title in bold text. Tables should be as small as possible. Bear in mind the size of a Nature page as a limiting factor when compiling a table.

Symbols and abbreviations are defined immediately below the table, followed by essential descriptive material as briefly as possible, all in double-spaced text.

Standard table formats are available for submissions of cryo-EM , NMR and X-ray crystallography data . Authors providing these data must use these standard tables and include them as Extended Data.

Figure legends

For initial submissions, we encourage authors to present the manuscript text and figures together in a single Word doc or PDF file, and for each figure legend to be presented together with its figure. However, when preparing the final paper to be accepted, we require figure legends to be listed one after the other, as part of the text document, separate from the figure files, and after the main reference list.

Each figure legend should begin with a brief title for the whole figure and continue with a short description of each panel and the symbols used. If the paper contains a Methods section, legends should not contain any details of methods. Legends should be fewer than 300 words each.

All error bars and statistics must be defined in the figure legend, as discussed above.

Nature requires figures in electronic format. Please ensure that all digital images comply with the Nature journals’ policy on image integrity .

Figures should be as small and simple as is compatible with clarity. The goal is for figures to be comprehensible to readers in other or related disciplines, and to assist their understanding of the paper. Unnecessary figures and parts (panels) of figures should be avoided: data presented in small tables or histograms, for instance, can generally be stated briefly in the text instead. Avoid unnecessary complexity, colouring and excessive detail.

Figures should not contain more than one panel unless the parts are logically connected; each panel of a multipart figure should be sized so that the whole figure can be reduced by the same amount and reproduced on the printed page at the smallest size at which essential details are visible. For guidance, Nature ’s standard figure sizes are 90 mm (single column) and 180 mm (double column) and the full depth of the page is 170 mm.

Amino-acid sequences should be printed in Courier (or other monospaced) font using the one-letter code in lines of 50 or 100 characters.

Authors describing chemical structures should use the Nature Research Chemical Structures style guide .

Some brief guidance for figure preparation:

Lettering in figures (labelling of axes and so on) should be in lower-case type, with the first letter capitalized and no full stop.

Units should have a single space between the number and the unit, and follow SI nomenclature or the nomenclature common to a particular field. Thousands should be separated by commas (1,000). Unusual units or abbreviations are defined in the legend.

Scale bars should be used rather than magnification factors.

Layering type directly over shaded or textured areas and using reversed type (white lettering on a coloured background) should be avoided where possible.

Where possible, text, including keys to symbols, should be provided in the legend rather than on the figure itself.

Figure quality

At initial submission, figures should be at good enough quality to be assessed by referees, preferably incorporated into the manuscript text in a single Word doc or PDF, although figures can be supplied separately as JPEGs if authors are unable to include them with the text. Authors are advised to follow the initial and revised submissions guidelines with respect to sizing, resolution and labelling.

Please note that print-publication quality figures are large and it is not helpful to upload them at the submission stage. Authors will be asked for high-quality figures when they are asked to submit the final version of their article for publication.At that stage, please prepare figures according to these guidelines .

Third party rights

Nature discourages the use or adaptation of previously published display items (for example, figures, tables, images, videos or text boxes). However, we recognize that to illustrate some concepts the use of published data is required and the reuse of previously published display items may be necessary. Please note that in these instances we might not be able to obtain the necessary rights for some images to be reused (as is, or adapted versions) in our articles. In such cases, we will contact you to discuss the sourcing of alternative material.

Figure costs

In order to help cover some of the additional cost of four-colour reproduction, Nature Portfolio charges our authors a fee for the printing of their colour figures. Please contact our offices for exact pricing and details. Inability to pay this charge will not prevent publication of colour figures judged essential by the editors, but this must be agreed with the editor prior to acceptance.

Production-quality figures

When a manuscript is accepted in principle for publication, the editor will ask for high-resolution figures. Do not submit publication-quality figures until asked to do so by an editor. At that stage, please prepare figures according to these guidelines .

Extended Data

Extended Data figures and tables are online-only (appearing in the online PDF and full-text HTML version of the paper), peer-reviewed display items that provide essential background to the Article but are not included in the printed version of the paper due to space constraints or being of interest only to a few specialists. A maximum of ten Extended Data display items (figures and tables) is typically permitted. See Composition of a Nature research paper .

Extended Data tables should be formatted along similar lines to tables appearing in print (see section 5.7) but the main body (excluding title and legend, which should be included at the end of the Word file) should be submitted separately as an image rather than as an editable format in Word, as Extended Data tables are not edited by Nature’s subediting department. Small tables may also be included as sub-panels within Extended Data figures. See Extended Data Formatting Guide .

Extended Data figures should be prepared along slightly different guidelines compared to figures appearing in print, and may be multi-panelled as long as they fit to size rules (see Extended Data Formatting Guide ). Extended Data figures are not edited or styled by Nature’s art department; for this reason, authors are requested to follow Nature style as closely as possible when preparing these figures. The legends for Extended Data figures should be prepared as for print figures and should be listed one after the other at the end of the Word file.

If space allows, Nature encourages authors to include a simple schematic, as a panel in an Extended Data figure, that summarizes the main finding of the paper, where appropriate (for example, to assist understanding of complex detail in cell, structural and molecular biology disciplines).

If a manuscript has Extended Data figures or tables, authors are asked to refer to discrete items at an appropriate place in the main text (for example, Extended Data Fig. 1 and Extended Data Table 1).

If further references are included in the Extended Data tables and Extended Data figure legends, the numbering should continue from the end of the last reference number in the main paper (or from the last reference number in the additional Methods section if present) and the list should be added to the end of the list accompanying the additional Methods section, if present, or added below the Extended Data legends if no additional Methods section is present.

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Information (SI) is online-only, peer-reviewed material that is essential background to the Article (for example, large data sets, methods, calculations), but which is too large or impractical, or of interest only to a few specialists, to justify inclusion in the printed version of the paper. See the Supplementary Information page for further details.

Supplementary Information should not contain figures (any figures additional to those appearing in print should be formatted as Extended Data figures). Tables may be included in Supplementary Information, but only if they are unsuitable for formatting as Extended Data tables (for example, tables containing large data sets or raw data that are best suited to Excel files).

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