Dear Anton,

As a matter of courtesy, I suggest that you write to the first author and then, with her/his written agreement, to write to the main editor of PlosOne. Other way, your message will be handled by the so many technical assistants of the journal and just to have an answer could take a long time.

Hi, Anton.

I think this is possible IF (and only if) you have the author's and the journal's permission. But I really recommend you to use original images, first, because it is possible that those images have copyright and the author and journal will say NO if you want to use it for your own paper. And second, because it always makes your paper look good if you hire a designer and come out with the right image, and not a copied one. Diatoms are relatively easy to photograph and then make beautiful images.

Hope this is useful.

Good luck

Lorena

Dear all, thank you very much for the answers, recommendations, and description of the necessary steps.

The rules of PlosONE allow to reproduce all published images without permission, but you should indicate images authors.

My advice is that you should obtain a documented permission from PlosONE, otherwise do not reproduce.