And we see the value in reinforcing findings and increasing confidence through independent complementary results. Research will not be rejected for novelty if it is submitted within 6 months of the publication of a complementary article or preprint.
We also know that an efficient, high-quality publication process is important to you, so we’re constantly honing our internal processes to improve timings. On average, PLOS ONE takes just 12 days from submission to initial decision to reject or review, while time to first decision is 44 days, 6.3% faster than the year before, and 10% faster than 2018. Meanwhile on PLOS Biology, our median time to initial editorial decision was just 4 days in 2020, down from 6.5 days the year before.
*60% of research submissions receive an initial decision within 5 days, 80% within a week