PLOS ONE reference format

What PLOS ONE expects

• Reference style: The ICMJE style, also called Vancouver. Numbered citation-sequence method, with the number in square brackets in the text, e.g. [19].
• Authors: First six authors, then et al.
• BibTeX style: plos2025.bst, in the PLOS LaTeX template zip.
• Journal names: Abbreviated as in the NCBI databases.
• DOI form: Written as doi: 10.1016/j.molimm.2014.11.005 at the end of the reference. Do not use a shortened DOI or the URL.
• LaTeX submissions: Submitted as PDF. A manuscript that does not follow the template format may be sent back.

Setting up the bibliography

From the PLOS LaTeX template, which uses the standard article class:

\documentclass[10pt,letterpaper]{article}
...
\bibliographystyle{plos2025}
...
\bibliography{plos_bibtex_sample}

Replace plos_bibtex_sample with the name of your .bib file.

Three references in plos2025.bst

1. Price MN, Dehal PS, Arkin AP. FastTree 2 – Approximately Maximum-Likelihood Trees for Large Alignments. PLoS One. 2010;5(3):e9490. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009490. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0009490
2. Saito T, Rehmsmeier M. The Precision-Recall Plot Is More Informative than the ROC Plot When Evaluating Binary Classifiers on Imbalanced Datasets. PLoS One. 2015;10(3):e0118432. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0118432. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0118432
3. Bach S, Binder A, Montavon G, Klauschen F, Müller KR, Samek W. On Pixel-Wise Explanations for Non-Linear Classifier Decisions by Layer-Wise Relevance Propagation. PLoS One. 2015;10(7):e0130140. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0130140. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0130140

Three PLOS ONE papers, produced by running plos2025.bst over a .bib file built from the Crossref record for each DOI. The style keeps the list in citation order. The link after each entry is added here for checking. Titles, authors, volumes and pages were checked against Crossref on 2026-10-01.

LaTeX template

PLOS provides one template for all its journals on the PLOS ONE LaTeX page: a zip with plos_latex_template.tex, plos2025.bst and a sample .bib file. It also works in Overleaf. We do not have a PLOS template page yet.

Common mistakes

• Listing every author. PLOS style stops at six and adds et al.
• Pasting the DOI as an https://doi.org/ link in a hand-typed list. The guidelines ask for the doi: label and the full DOI, and say not to give a shortened DOI or the URL.
• Citations in the abstract. The guidelines say not to include them.
• Spelled-out journal names. The guidelines ask for NCBI abbreviations, and the .bst prints the journal field as you typed it.
• Citing unpublished work in the reference list, such as manuscripts submitted but not yet accepted.

Check your .bib file

• BibTeX Validator (free) checks a .bib file for syntax errors and missing required fields.
• Citation Generator (free) builds IEEE, APA, MLA and Chicago citations from entry fields, in your browser.
• Reference Converter (free) converts between BibTeX, RIS and EndNote. The same converter is below.
• Paper Review with the Journal Pack checks a manuscript against the submission rules of 25 venues, PLOS ONE among them.