Research articles modeling aspects of biological systems should demonstrate both scientific novelty and profound new biological insights. Research articles describing improved or routine methods, models, software, and databases will not be considered by PLoS Computational Biology, and may be more appropriate for PLoS ONE.
To be considered for publication in PLoS Computational Biology, any given manuscript must satisfy the following criteria:
* Originality
* High importance to researchers in computational biology
* Significant biological insight and general interest to life scientists
* Rigorous methodology
* Substantial evidence for its conclusions
Manuscripts also must be well written to ensure clear and effective presentation of the work and key findings.
The best possible review of a Research Article would answer the following questions:
* What are the main claims of the paper and how significant are they? Is this paper important in its discipline?
* Have the authors provided adequate proof for their claims?
* Are these claims novel? If not, please specify papers that weaken the claims of originality of this one.
* Would additional work improve the paper? How much better would the paper be if this work were performed and how difficult would it be to do this work?
* Are the claims properly placed in the context of the previous literature? Have the authors treated the literature fairly?
* Do the data and analyses support the claims? If not, what other evidence is required?
* Are original data deposited in appropriate repositories and accession/version numbers provided for genes, proteins, mutants, diseases, etc.?
* Does the study conform to any relevant guidelines such as CONSORT, MIAME, QUORUM, STROBE, and the Fort Lauderdale agreement?
* Are details of the methodology sufficient to allow the experiments to be reproduced?
* Is any software created by the authors freely available?
* PLoS Computational Biology encourages authors to publish detailed protocols and algorithms as supporting information online. Do any particular methods used in the manuscript warrant such treatment?
* Is the manuscript well organized and written clearly enough to be accessible to non-specialists? Would you recommend the author seek the services of a professional science writer?*
* Have any parts of the paper been published elsewhere? Are there any copyright issues associated with this that conflict with the PLoS license?*
* Does the paper use standardized scientific nomenclature and abbreviations? If not, are these explained at the first usage?
http://www.ploscompbiol.org/static/reviewerGuidelines.action
Oxford Journals
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/nar/for_authors/msprep_database.html
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