All PeerJ articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (see each article for the exact CC BY version used). With this license, Authors retain copyright, but allow any user to share, copy, distribute, transmit, adapt and make commercial use of the work without needing to provide additional permission, provided appropriate attribution is made to the original author or source.

By using this license, all PeerJ articles meet or exceed all funder and institutional requirements for being considered Open Access.

Authors cannot use copyrighted material within their article unless that material has also been made available under a similarly liberal license.

The corresponding author(s) must have at least a free PeerJ account at the time of submission. Any co-authors will receive an email after submission with directions on how to confirm their co-authorship. Remember to check spam folders for missing PeerJ email and add [email protected] to email contact lists.

All named authors must have paid for either the article processing charge (APC) or a Membership after receiving a final decision of "Accept" and before the manuscript will move into production. Different membership plans allow different numbers of publications per year - therefore each author’s membership plan must be high enough to permit this publication.

If a manuscript has more than twelve authors and choosing memberships instead of paying the single APC, then only twelve need to have paid membership plans. The remaining authors must have at least a free PeerJ account.

Waiver Policy: Authors from countries classified as low income can request a full waiver for a single publication, one per submitting author, per year. In addition, any co-author who was an undergraduate at the time of the research may also request a waiver (provided the paper has senior co-author(s) who have a paid membership plan, and provided the article passes peer review as normal). Neither circumstance is a waiver for a full membership plan. Authors should indicate their desire for a waiver in the "Confidential Notes to Staff" field upon submission, and Academic Editors and reviewers are not made aware of the waiver request.

Membership plan status is not a determining factor in peer review or editorial decisions. PeerJ reserves the right not to consider, or ultimately publish, any given article.

Inform all co-authors of the submission of the manuscript to the journal (note: each co-author will receive a confirmation email upon submission and will need to confirm their authorship).

Ensure that the manuscript is in full adherence with all PeerJ policies (including such items as publication ethics, data deposition, materials deposition, etc). Additionally ensure that all co-authors are aware of, and in compliance with, all PeerJ policies and procedures.

Manage all correspondence between the journal and all co-authors, keeping the full co-author group apprised of the manuscript progress.

Designate a substitute correspondent for times of unavailability.

Ensure that by the point of Editorial Acceptance all co-authors have paid publishing plans or assume responsibility for their publication charges (note: authors can pay for a publishing plan at any point up to, and including, Editorial Acceptance).

Post Publication: Respond to all queries pertaining to the published manuscript, provide data and materials as requested.

The submission must be created (and completed) by one of the co-authors, not by an agency or by some other individual who is not one of the co-authors.

Ensure the submission is free from spelling errors; grammatical errors; and unclear expression.

Peer reviewers are encouraged (but not required) to provide their names to the authors when submitting their peer review. If they agree to provide their name, then their personal profile page will reflect a public acknowledgment that they performed a review (even if the article is rejected). If the article is accepted, then reviewers who provided their name will be associated with the article itself.

Authors are given the option to reproduce the complete peer review history of their article alongside the final publication of the article. If they choose this option then all submitted manuscript files, peer review comments, author rebuttals and revised materials are provided as a downloadable package. This is an all-or-nothing option; no text is edited or removed. Therefore, if the reviewers agreed to provide their name to the authors then their name will become part of this published record as well.

See examples of optional open peer review and the latest data on uptake by the community.

PeerJ adheres to the prevailing industry standards and procedures for investigating publication ethics.

PeerJ does not allow dual publication (the same material published twice in the peer reviewed literature), or dual submission (the same material simultaneously submitted to more than one journal).

Specifically, PeerJ does not tolerate plagiarism, data or figure manipulation, knowingly providing incorrect information, copyright infringement, inaccurate author attributions, attempts to inappropriately manipulate the peer review process, failures to declare conflicts of interest, fraud, and libel. This list is not exhaustive - if there is uncertainty of what constitutes such actions, then more resources may be found at the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Council of Science Editors (CSE), or the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).

PeerJ will rigorously enforce our standards, and follow up on any transgressions. In extreme cases, this may call for individuals to be reported to their institutions and/or for manuscripts to be retracted. Any complaints should be directed to editorial.support@peerj.com

PeerJ requires that all parties involved in a publication (i.e. the authors, reviewers and academic editors) should transparently declare any potential Competing Interests (also known as Conflicts of Interest). The disclosure of a Competing Interest does not necessarily mean that there is an issue to be addressed; it simply ensures that all parties are appropriately informed of any relevant considerations while they work on the submission.

Authors are asked to declare all competing interests upon submission. Reviewers are expected to consider any competing interests before agreeing to review, and to confirm that they have no competing interests before submitting their review. Academic Editors are expected to recuse themselves from handling a manuscript if they feel they have a competing interest.

Potential competing interests should be declared even if the individual in question feels that these interests do not represent an actual conflict. Examples of Competing Interests include, but are not limited to: possible financial benefits if the manuscript is published; prior working, or personal, relationships with any of the authors; patent activity on the results; consultancy activity around the results; personal material or financial gain (such as free travel, gifts, etc.) relating to the work; personal convictions (religious, political, etc.) which may have a bearing on the work, and so on.

While possible financial benefits should appear here, actual funding sources (institutional, corporate, grants, etc.) should be detailed in the funding disclosure statement.

Separately from declaring Competing Interests, PeerJ also requires that authors disclose the financing which made their work possible.

The Funding statement is published in the final article. This disclosure provides added transparency.

Where applicable, PeerJ requires that authors provide an Ethics statement which details the relevant ethical standards which were met when conducting the research.

In addition to providing an Ethics statement upon submission (for review purposes), this same statement should also be provided in the Materials and Methods section of the manuscript.

Where IRB approval was required, the authors must provide an ethics statement as part of their Materials and Methods section detailing full information regarding their approval (including the name of the granting organization, and the approval reference numbers).​​ If an approval reference number is not provided, written approval must be provided as confidential supplemental file.

When research is conducted in any location other than at the researchers’ institution or a permanent field station then appropriate permission (aka ‘field research permit’) must have been obtained according to applicable laws and norms.

Adequate proof of this permission or a clear indication of how the access was allowed under local or international law must be provided at submission. If verbal permission was obtained then the name and authority of the person who gave it must be provided.

This documentation is not necessarily published, but by requiring proof we aim to ensure the legality and integrity of the science we publish.

On a case by case basis, PeerJ reserves the right to consider whether or not a submission could be considered as sensitive in this context.

If an author, editor or reviewer feels that a submission may be subject to concerns surrounding dual use then it is incumbent on them to report this concern to staff.

PeerJ is committed to improving scholarly communications and as part of this commitment, all authors are responsible for making materials, code, data and associated protocols available to readers without delay. The preferred way to meet this requirement is to publicly deposit as noted below. Cases of non-compliance will be investigated by PeerJ, which reserves the right to act on the results of the investigation.

- FORCE11 has developed a useful overview for reporting in the life sciences. Please review these recommendations before submitting. Recommendations cover the following areas: Sequence Molecule Identification, Reporting of Antibodies, Reporting of Model Organisms, Reporting of Cell Lines, Constructs, and Reporting of Knockdown Reagents.

- Large domain-specific datasets should be deposited in a public repository (e.g. GenBank, INSDC, Protein Data Bank, UK Stem Cell Bank, Addgene, RIKEN Bioresource Centre) and an accession number or access address provided in the published article. Additional databases may be found by consulting the BioSharing database, re3data.org, or the NIH Data Sharing Repositories list.

- Where suitable domain-specific repositories do not exist, authors may deposit in either Dryad, Dataverse, the Open Science Framework, or an institutional repository and provide the access information with the manuscript. Alternately, authors may choose to deposit non-standard data (including figures, posters, rich media) on Figshare or PeerJ Preprints, for example. In all cases, the DOI reference (where applicable) should be provided in the article.

- Any supporting data sets for which there are no suitable repositories may be made available as publishable Supplemental Information files by PeerJ.

- Data should be provided in an appropriate, machine-readable format. Note: formats such as PDF, Powerpoint, and images of tables etc. are not considered suitable for raw data sharing.

- Where appropriate, physical materials (for example mutant seed stock, or paleontological specimens) should be permanently deposited in recognized centers (for example seed stock centers for the former, or recognized museums or institutions for the latter).

- A non exhaustive list of repositories for physical materials such as cell lines or mutant strains includes the RIKEN Bioresource Centre; the Jackson Laboratory; the European Mouse Mutant Archive; the European Conditional Mouse Mutagenesis Program; the American Type Culture Collection; the Knockout Mouse Project; Addgene; the Mutant Mouse Regional Resource Centers.

- Where novel research compounds are used, their chemical identity must be disclosed.

- Publications using commercial antibodies should report the supplying company and code number for all antibodies used. We recommend reporting using the following format:

- In accordance with the principles in Sharing Publication-Related Data and Materials (National Academies Press, 2003), research using proprietary data must also evaluate a piece of comparable public data if the authors cannot or do not make the proprietary data available.

- For software papers, 'materials' are taken to mean the source code and/or relevant software components required to run the software and reproduce the reported results. The software should be open source, made available under an appropriate license, and deposited in an appropriate archive. Data used to validate a software tool is subject to the same sharing requirements as any data in PeerJ publications.

In all cases, accession / deposition reference numbers must be provided in the manuscript.

Some repositories offer authors the option to host data associated with a manuscript confidentially, and provide anonymous access to PeerJ for reviewing purposes. Therefore, if allowed by the repository, it is the authors' responsibility to coordinate prompt public release of the data with the repository on the publication date if kept confidential during peer review.

Any potential restrictions on data, code or materials (for example: proprietary data, material limitations, or information relating to human subjects), including how other researchers might attempt replication without this data, must be disclosed at the time of submission. PeerJ reserves the right to refuse consideration of such articles.

We strongly recommend (and in some cases require) that authors adhere to the reporting standards which have been adopted by their field (or which apply to their study design).

Authors should indicate which standards were followed and should, where appropriate, provide checklists, protocols, flowcharts etc as Supplemental Information as part of their article submission. Where accession or reference numbers have been obtained, these should also be provided in the text.

As a general statement, data should be referred to by the most specific identifier available for the database archive it is submitted to.

All statistical results should be fully reported, including the test that was performed, the corresponding test statistic, degrees of freedom, the exact p-value (not, e.g. "p<0.05"), and effect sizes. Where appropriate, we recommend that you overlay bar graphs with scatter plots showing individual data points, or use another method to show the distribution of the data, such as boxplots, violin plots, etc.

PeerJ welcomes articles describing bioinformatics software tools. These articles should present new software tools (or significant new functionality in existing software) of particular interest to the bioinformatics and/or computational biology communities. The described tools should provide new computational or analytical functionality for researchers.

The functionality of the software should, where appropriate, be validated using real-world biological data and/or compared to existing tools. If available as a package (e.g. Python, R, Matlab, Octave), it should be accompanied by a minimal script that downloads the data (if not included in the package), loads it, and performs the analysis to reproduce the results (tables, plots, visualizations etc.) in the manuscript. Documentation & comments must be clear and sufficient to allow a typical user to perform the analysis described in the article. Ideally, the tools should be usable in a workflow that encourages reproducible research practices.

The software must be released under an open source license (e.g. MIT, GPL) and be widely available (i.e. hosted in a public repository such as Github or Bitbucket, or an institutional repository). Use of a version control system (e.g. Git, Subversion etc.) is strongly encouraged, as is adherence to language-specific packaging practices where appropriate. We also recommend the inclusion of appropriate unit tests. The software must be free to noncommercial users, and must be accessible without requiring any personally identifiable information. Software and validation data sets must comply with PeerJ Data and Materials Sharing policies. Reliance on a proprietary software such as Matlab does not preclude the publication but in general, a fully open source method is to be preferred.

In addition, PeerJ suggests that authors consult the EQUATOR Network (a general resource listing various reporting standards for health research studies); the MIBBI Portal (a listing of Minimum Information guidelines from diverse bioscience communities); or the BioSharing site for additional reporting guidelines or checklists which might apply to their work.

Manuscripts that report on population genetics should include special justification for presenting data based on both limited genetic data (<10 microsatellites or a single, low variability mtDNA region) and/or small sample sizes (<100 individuals). PeerJ does not publish primer notes. Manuscripts that report the characterization of specific primers (such as microsatellites) should include substantial biological analyses, and address a biological question or hypothesis as the focus of the submission.

Manuscripts that report range extensions, life history information, or the description of new species or other taxa should address a biological question or hypothesis as the focus of the submission. Unless there are compelling mitigating circumstances, descriptions of new extant taxa should be based on the whole organism (rather than shells/fragments/organs alone) and be supported by multiple lines of evidence (e.g. morphology, genetics, etc.).

For research conducted on regulated animals (which includes all live vertebrates and/or higher invertebrates), appropriate approval must have been obtained according to either international or local laws and regulations. Before conducting the research, approval must have been obtained from the relevant body (in most cases an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, Ethics Committee, or a government body). The authors must provide an ethics statement as part of their Methods section detailing full information as to their approval (including the name of the granting organization, and the approval reference numbers). If an approval reference number is not provided, written approval must be provided as a confidential supplemental information file. Research on non-human primates is subject to specific guidelines from the Weatherall (2006) report (The Use of Non-Human Primates in Research).

For research conducted on non-regulated animals, a statement should be made as to why ethical approval was not required.

Experimental animals should have been handled according to the highest standards dictated by the author’s institution.

We strongly encourage all authors to comply with the 'Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments' (ARRIVE) guidelines, developed by NC3Rs.

Articles should be specific in descriptions of the organism(s) used in the study. The description should indicate strain names when known.

For experiments involving human subjects, appropriate approval must have been obtained from the relevant approval body (in most cases the authors’ Institutional Review Board, or ethics committee). The authors must provide an ethics statement as part of their Materials and Methods section detailing full information regarding their approval (including the name of the granting organization, and the approval reference numbers). If an approval reference number is not provided, written approval must be provided as a confidential supplemental information file. Any research must have conformed to the Declaration of Helsinki. If an approval was not obtained, the authors must provide a statement explaining why it was not needed.

Authors must include a statement confirming that informed consent was obtained from all subjects. If consent was written, an empty copy of the consent form used should be provided as a Confidential Supplemental Information file. If consent was verbal instead of written, then an explanation should be provided (in the Materials and Methods section), and verbal consent must have been approved by the IRB which gave permission for the study.

Individual privacy and anonymity must be protected. Identifying information (such as names, photographs, identifying data) should not be included in the manuscript. Exceptions can be made only when evidence is provided that the individuals in question have given explicit approval. More information about individual privacy, anonymity, and informed consent can be found in the ICMJE Privacy and Confidentiality guidelines.

In order to increase discoverability, when naming a new species we recommend that the names are mentioned in the title (where feasible) and in the abstract of your article. If multiple new species are being named then it may not be practical to include all or any of them in the title due to space constraints.

New Zoological Taxonomic Names: Electronic publication of new zoological taxonomic names is now permitted by the ICZN with an amendment to the current Code. To name a new zoological species, genus or family, authors must comply with rules of the ICZN that require details of the publication to be entered into the official ICZN registry, Zoobank. Please note that PeerJ will be archived in PubMed Central and CLOCKSS, and will show up as a known journal during the ZooBank registration process.

You will need to contact Zoobank to obtain LSIDs for your new species and for your publication. Please do this as early as possible to avoid delays. For registration of a new zoological taxon, we require two items to be included in your submission.

- In the metadata, the globally unique identifier (GUID), currently a Life Science Identifier (LSID), should be listed with the new species name. For example:

Brachycephalus mariaeterezae sp. nov. urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:74D8D85E-BE68-4A51-AF85-DC97C564D458

- Authors must use the following text in the Methods section:

"The electronic version of this article in Portable Document Format (PDF) will represent a published work according to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), and hence the new names contained in the electronic version are effectively published under that Code from the electronic edition alone. This published work and the nomenclatural acts it contains have been registered in ZooBank, the online registration system for the ICZN. The ZooBank LSIDs (Life Science Identifiers) can be resolved and the associated information viewed through any standard web browser by appending the LSID to the prefix http://zoobank.org/. The LSID for this publication is: [INSERT HERE]. The online version of this work is archived and available from the following digital repositories: PeerJ, PubMed Central and CLOCKSS."

New Botanical Taxon: To publish the name of a new botanical taxon (or to publish new combinations or replacement names), PeerJ has two requirements that must be met:

- The globally unique identifier, currently a Life Science Identifier (LSID), should be listed under the new taxon name in the Results Section.

• At acceptance, the International Plant Names Index (IPNI, a database which deals only with seed plants, ferns & lycophytes) will be contacted by PeerJ editorial staff to provide the identifier. It should be noted that obtaining an LSID isn’t a requirement under the ICN, but it is a requirement of PeerJ.

-Assuming an LSID is obtained, authors will be made aware of them by PeerJ staff and must use the following text in the Methods section:

"The electronic version of this article in Portable Document Format (PDF) will represent a published work according to the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN), and hence the new names contained in the electronic version are effectively published under that Code from the electronic edition alone. In addition, new names contained in this work which have been issued with identifiers by IPNI will eventually be made available to the Global Names Index. The IPNI LSIDs can be resolved and the associated information viewed through any standard web browser by appending the LSID contained in this publication to the prefix "http://ipni.org/". The online version of this work is archived and available from the following digital repositories: PeerJ, PubMed Central, and CLOCKSS".

New Fungal Taxon: As of Jan 2012 the ICN accepts electronic PDFs as publications of record establishing new scientific names for algae, fungi, and plants.

- An additional ICN publication requirement effective January 1, 2013: all manuscripts naming fungi must obtain the citation of an identifier issued by a recognized repository such as MycoBank or Index Fungorum and include it in the protologue (everything associated with a name at its valid publication). Life Science Identifiers (LSIDs) or Globally Unique Identifier are only required for fungi.

- In the Methods section, authors must include a sub-section called "Nomenclature" using the following wording (this example is for taxon names submitted to MycoBank; please substitute appropriately if the name was submitted to Index Fungorum):

"The electronic version of this article in Portable Document Format (PDF) will represent a published work according to the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants, and hence the new names contained in the electronic version are effectively published under that Code from the electronic edition alone. In addition, new names contained in this work have been submitted to MycoBank from where they will be made available to the Global Names Index. The unique MycoBank number can be resolved and the associated information viewed through any standard web browser by appending the MycoBank number contained in this publication to the prefix "http://www.mycobank.org/MycoTaxo.aspx?Link=T&Rec=". The online version of this work is archived and available from the following digital repositories: PeerJ, PubMed Central, and CLOCKSS."

New Bacterial Taxon: The new taxon will be considered validly published when the two requirements below are fulfulled.

- Authors of new names and new combinations must provide evidence that types are deposited in two recognized culture collections in two different countries (i.e. documents certifying deposition and availability of type strains). Upload these certificates as Supplemental Files at submission.

- As required by the Bacteriological Code, the IJSEM publishes Validation Lists containing new names that were effectively published in any journal other than the IJSB/IJSEM. To complete validation of new names effectively published, authors should submit a covering letter and three reprints or photocopies or a PDF file of the published article(s) to the IJSEM Editorial Office.

New Viral Taxon: For viruses, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) has been charged with approving new taxa and names.

- All new viral taxa must be approved by ICTV before any individual taxon (and its name) can be official. To create a new taxon, a proposal should be submitted to the ICTV using the procedures detailed in their FAQ.

- Authors must provide proof that a proposal has been made to ICTV or that their proposal has been accepted at the time of submission in the New Species declaration.

• If the new taxon is currently under review, cite the URL of the proposal in the metadata:

  This proposed new species [INSERT NAME] has been submitted to the ICTV for consideration. This name is only valid and official after the ICTV has approved the name, and it has been ratified by the membership: [INSERT URL].

• If the new taxon has been approved but is awaiting ratification, cite the proposal URL:

  This proposed new species [INSERT NAME] has been approved by the ICTV. This name is only valid and official after the ICTV has both approved the name and it has been ratified by the membership: [INSERT URL].

• If the new taxon has been approved and ratified but is still awaiting publication in the taxonomy, cite the proposal URL:

  This proposed new species [INSERT NAME] has been approved and ratified by the ICTV. It has not yet been published in the annual taxonomy: [INSERT URL].

• If the new taxon has been approved, ratified and published, cite publication of the annual taxonomy, for instance:

  This new species [INSERT NAME] has been approved and ratified by the ICTV as reported in: “Changes to taxonomy and the International Code of Virus Classification and Nomenclature ratified by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (2018)”. Arch Virol. 2018 May 12. doi: 10.1007/s00705-018-3847-1. PubMed PMID: 29754305.

Authors may request that specific individuals be prevented from seeing their submission (a practice known as 'opposition').

Requests to oppose individuals should be limited in nature, should refer to specific individuals (not broad lists or categories of people), and should be made only with good reason.

While we will attempt to accommodate reasonable requests, we cannot guarantee that all requests will be honored.

If an author feels strongly that an inappropriate decision has been made on their decision, then PeerJ allows them to make a single Appeal.

Appeals must be submitted with detailed information as to why the original decision was in error.

We will first approach the original academic editor and determine whether, in light of this feedback, they now wish to change their mind. If they do not, then a second Academic Editor (or in some cases a committee of Academic Editors) will be asked to make an adjudication. In some cases this may involve re-review of the article.

The new decision is considered final.

Authors should be aware that Appeals often take some time to be resolved.

PeerJ does not consider articles which have previously appeared in a recognized peer reviewed journal (as this represents dual publication).

PeerJ accepts submissions which have previously appeared on preprint servers (including PeerJ Preprints and arXiv); have previously been presented at conferences; or have previously appeared in other ‘non journal’ venues (for example: blogs or posters).

We encourage authors to discuss and disseminate their findings as they wish. If they are discussing submissions which have not yet been formally accepted, then they should state this fact. If they are discussing with journalists, they should inform the editorial office so that we are aware of potential news deadlines.

When an article is selected to be Press Released, PeerJ will set an embargo on news coverage corresponding to the publication date of the article. Once it is set, we request that news media do not publish stories ahead of this embargo (primarily as the final article itself will not be available until that date).

Once accepted and press released, authors may not prevent journalists from discussing an embargoed article with other researchers (for example by requiring an NDA to be signed).

PeerJ requires that all public comments follow the normal standards of professional discourse.

All commenters are named and their comments are associated to their PeerJ profile.

PeerJ does not allow anonymous or pseudonymous commenting or user profiles.

If a Commenter has any possible Conflict of Interest, they should declare this conflict as part of their Comment.

PeerJ does not tolerate language that is insulting, inflammatory, obscene, or libelous.

PeerJ reserves the right to edit/remove all or parts of Comments to bring them in line with these policies. Repeat offenders will have commenting rights removed. PeerJ is the final arbiter as to the suitability of any comments.

PeerJ publishes accepted manuscripts under a CC BY license.

It is the author’s responsibility to obtain the appropriate permissions from the original publisher to republish any previously published text, figures, tables, Supplementary Information, etc., in an Open Access journal under a CC BY license.