Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Format Matters

When you are submitting a manuscript, do you format the text, tables etc. in the style of the journal or do you wait and see if the paper is going to be accepted before taking the time to do that?

Some journals (editors) get annoyed if the manuscript is not already (mostly) in the journal format at the time of submission, even if the paper may be rejected. One reason for this is that the formatting stage can add an extra step; that is, one more back-and-forth between editor and authors, so it's more efficient if the formatting is done at the beginning (and any problems fixed in the review stage). If the paper is accepted, this helps everyone; if the paper is rejected, the authors wasted some time.

Avoiding this extra step definitely makes the review process faster for the author. In my experience, it is the rare author who sufficiently takes care of all necessary formatting issues in the revision stage if they didn't previously make an attempt at following journal format in the first submission. If they try to format the manuscript correctly the first time, I can comment on any problems, and then these can be fixed in the revised manuscript. If the manuscript is not formatted until the revision stage, I typically have to send it back again for technical fixes. Some of the details of formatting can be taken care of by the diligent copy-editors employed by the journal, but the paper is supposed to be (mostly) in journal format when the editors send it along to the copy-editors.

And beware submitting a paper with flawed reference lists to some journals! Certain large publishing companies use manuscript submission software that detects even minor flaws that used to be dealt with at a later stage of the review process but that now can delay review of a manuscript. Wouldn't it be nice if these clever programs also formatted the manuscript (including references) for you, saving time for everyone? As an author and editor, I would like that. Formatting my own manuscripts and checking the formatting of manuscripts of others is tedious.

Anyway, there may be reasons beyond efficiency to format the manuscript in the style of the journal to which it is submitted. As an editor, when I see a manuscript submitted in the very characteristic style of another journal, it does cross my mind that the manuscript might have been rejected by that journal and submitted to my journal. Does that matter if this thought flits across my brain? Probably not, but, as an author, I'd rather an editor not have that thought.

A prior rejection may be irrelevant to another journal depending on why it was rejected by the other journal and whether any significant changes were made to fix potential problems. I am not necessarily talking about rejection by High Impact Journals, but also peer journals (in terms of impact factor and topic).

If a manuscript with suspicious formatting seems worthy of review, it will be reviewed by my journal despite the xeno-formatting, but on more than one occasion I have received an e-mail from an invited reviewer of one of these manuscripts saying "I already reviewed this for the X Journal and it doesn't look like they have changed anything. This is the same paper and I still hate it." That's not good. Not that formatting alone would improve the fate of the paper, but ideally the re-formatting and a serious revision would occur simultaneously, so re-reviewers (and editors) could potentially be more friendly to the revised paper.

So far I have mostly been discussing this from the point of view of an editor, but what actually inspired this post is the fact that I have been spending considerable time today formatting a manuscript for a particular journal. This journal has really bizarre and picky formatting rules, and I am sure I will make errors, but at least it will look mostly like a correctly formatted paper. Maybe that will help the editor 'see' it as a paper appropriate for this journal.. Or, at least, that is what I tell myself when I am making sure that I follow the correct rules for fonts, headings, first paragraph indentation (or not), in-text references, reference list...........

26 comments:

Alex said...

LaTeX makes most of this easy. There's usually some detail that I need to change during copy-editing, e.g. in the text I referred to a figure as Figure 1 in a journal that prefers Fig. 1 or whatever, but LaTeX gets the vast majority of it for me. So formatting is usually not a very big deal. Even for stuff in the text like Figure vs. Fig. or whatever, if I just define a LaTeX command like \fig, and use that throughout to refer to figures, then when I change journals all I have to do is change the definition of \fig at the start of the file rather than search-and-replace throughout the file.

mOOm said...

I don't bother about exact formatting unless the journal insists on it, which is very rare in my social science field. But I do try to make things look neat and consistent and so I might as well use the format of the first journal I submit to unless it is really outrageous (e.g. Nature style referencing).

Anonymous said...

Score another one for LaTeX. Perhaps it is different in other fields, but in my field we just download the style template and rebuild our paper with the changes. Usually all that is needed is a quick scan to check for formatting errors such as text over-runs.

Anonymous said...

Some of my co-authors use LaTeX, some don't. Some of the journals to which I submit have style templates, and some don't. I do less formatting than I used to, but there's no escaping it entirely. I try to format each manuscript for each journal, even if I have to do it "by hand".

Dario said...

As an author and reviewer, here is my point of view: some (most) journals have ridiculous demands! Should I remind everybody that we write articles and review them for free? But this is apparently not enough, we now also have to use their templates and be super thorough about formatting. For instance, I have been asked to modify one paper, that had already been accepted, because the reference format was not the one used by the journal. This basically meant changing commas for semicolons and other such things. Also, some journal have prehistoric demands about the software you have to use: for instance most journals in my field (theoretical materials chemistry) do not accept Word 2007 :S

That said, I always use the journal templates and try to comply with their requirements, but I just think this is too much! Would love to hear from somebody "from the other side"...

Maria said...

Oh, how I wish that LaTeX was the standard in life sciences... I wrote my thesis in LaTeX, but still had to submit a version as a (quite ugly) Word document - what a hassle.

Anonymous said...

I chair the editorial board of a social science journal. When a manuscript comes in that's not formatted to (roughly) match our style sheet, our managing editor assumes this will be a less cooperative author down the line. Why would we figure someone will follow guidelines and attend to detail later if they don't at the start, when there's actually something riding on it? I can get cranky about this. Extra work for our managing editor and copyeditor will eventually get cashed out in money right out of the journal's budget.

Anonymous said...

I am in social sciences. What we require is a professional readable document. Formatting to exact style comes when you get almost to acceptance...but we are often talking years in this field, so there is plenty of time to do it precisely when you agree it's publishable in that journal. BUT it better come in a really good accepted standard, often a latex form to prove that you are willing and capable of conforming to required standards at the appropriate timre.

Anonymous said...

Does anyone use Endnote for the reference section? I found it to be useful.

Anonymous said...

I have been curious about this, even as a reviewer. What are the authors thinking when they submit a manuscript with numbered headings to a journal that doesn't use numbered headings, or numbered in-text references for journals that don't use numbered in-text references (etc.)? Are they resubmitting something rejected elsewhere? Do they just not care because formatting is a technical detail? My unscientific observation is that improperly formatted manuscripts also have other technical flaws, such as in the references or listing of figures, suggesting that it can signal carelessness. But I won't defend that opinion too much.

Cherish said...

I'd have to agree with those above who use LaTeX. I used Word for my MS thesis. After that experience, I swore I'd never use it for anything of substance again. The learning curve is a bit steeper than word, but once you get the hang of it, it's SO much easier. And, fortunately, most engineering and physics journals provide templates. The biggest advantage, in my mind, is automatic formatting of references.

Funny Researcher said...

"Wouldn't it be nice if these clever programs also formatted the manuscript (including references) for you, saving time for everyone? "

Latex it is !

To submit to another journal, I just need to change the style header and possibly the bib styling and everything comes out polish, clean and with new journal format.

Anonymous said...

The people praising LaTeX are living in a different world than some of the rest of us. It might work for you, but unfortunately not for everyone.

Anonymous said...

As a reviewer and an author, I cannot understand why so many authors and journals cling to archaic formatting that no longer makes sense. Double-spacing is so 1995. Putting figures at the end? That just guarantees I won't look at the figures at the right time, or that I will have to keep flipping back and forth, or that I have to keep two windows open, one for the MS and one for the figures (which is even worse now that I read and review a lot on my iPad). On the other hand, journals that request formatting in close-to-final form are doing the reviewers a huge favor. After all, final papers are nicely formatted for a reason. I have taken to basically submitting articles in single space with figures placed where they belong, regardless of the style requested by the journal. And then in the 1-in-4 times we have to reformat, we do (note that it is almost always to return the document to a much less reader-friendly form: double-spaced, figures at the end). I am now reviewing at a rate of about 3:1 (reviewed:published), so I feel I am pulling my weight. I should say that I'm in a physical science where data, cartoons/schemes, and informative images are essential.

Anonymous said...

To anonymous @7:12:
This is the copy editor's job! Personally I do format for the journal in terms of section headings, etc. and work hard to get the references & citations in the expected format, but I'm sick of doing everyone else's job for them. If the commas are wrong or the journal name should be abbreviated, fix it, don't send it back to me for crappy piddling changes.

Susan said...

I have always formatted in the journal's style, both to give the reviewers one less thing to be cranky about, and to give the reviewers and editor the idea that we're serious about trying to publish in their journal (not just trying it on for size, ready to move on, etc).

Anonymous said...

Some journals though absolutely insist on getting it perfect...
I've recently submitted to Oecologia (a mid-tier ecology journal) and they've sent it back to me twice to fix the formatting.
The first time okay, there were things I hadn't done e.g. reference list was full journal names rather than abbreviated (for reasons other have explained).
So I went through all the instructions with a fine tooth comb. Thought I'd covered everything but it's now come back again.
Problem is there's no indication as to what's wrong - I asked the managing editor but he hasn't replied to me so now I'm at a complete loss.
It's fine to ask authors to fix things but tell us what's wrong!! Trying to guess is just a complete waste of everyone's time!

mathgirl said...

LaTeX, LaTeX, LaTeX.

I wish you all from the bottom of my heart that your journals start accepting LaTeX as soon as possible.

We do have this discussion while submitting papers in mathematics. Some people like to submit the paper with the journal format so that they don't have to think about it anymore. Some other people consider that submitting with the journal format is like bragging that you're sure the paper will be accepted, and thus, they don't put the journal format.

In any case, the discussion is: should I take the 10 minutes to change it into the journal format now, or should I do it later?

plam said...

Anonymous@926: I didn't quite catch any reasons why LaTeX doesn't work for you.

I exclusively write papers in LaTeX. It works for me, and I strongly agree with all of the other comments about just changing the style. (I did have an embarrassing case where I forgot to re-run LaTeX before submitting, and produced numbered references without numbers in the actual references. Oops. So, yes, it's stupid that this can even happen. LaTeX isn't perfect, but it's better than Word.)

Anonymous@944: Copy editors? Huh? I really don't expect any value added from copy editors, which is good, because our papers are (as far as I can tell) basically not copy edited, unless the copy editors are causing vandalism to the contents.

Anonymous said...

LaTeX can also make things hairy. Has anyone used ACM's style, and waded through fixing all those useless compilation errors? That said, it's better than Word, any day. I just wish someone would come up with a more modern, user-friendly version of TeX.

Anonymous said...

This discussion is a TOTAL eye-opener for me! In my field, all the journals follow the same basic formatting. So it is easy to decide at the last minute which journal to submit to -- just drop in the right Latex style file and presto. Seems like the only thing that varies between them is the font. Why don't all journals just get together and standardize format?

Anonymous said...

I.Hate.LaTeX.

DrugMonkey said...

Reference management software takes care of those style issues in a trice. That part should never be an issue. In my journals of interest the only remaining issues have to do with numbered sub/headings, whether it is "Methods" or "Materials and methods" and possibly whether the Methods go after the Intro or after the Discussion*.

I find these trivial so I am very intrigued by te formatting changes to which you refer.

*I find this latter structure to be ridiculous.

Catherine said...

I am one of the editors at Nature Chemical Biology. The formatting of the initial submission is of zero interest to us, as long as the words make sentences and all parts are generally there. I strongly agree that authors should not need to care about our particular archaic rules as much as possible.

Catherine Goodman

Anonymous said...

Really, Dario? EndNote, Papers, Bookends, Ref Manager, whatever will format to a different journal style with one click. How hard is it to use a reference manager? In life sciences, one of these programs are the first thing you learn how to use in your first year.

chemprof said...

I am surprised that this is even a question. If you are submitting a manuscript to a journal then surely you as the authors are of the view that it is of suitable standard, rather than just 'having a go' but expecting it will be rejected? This being the case, it is only reasonable that it is formatted correctly for the journal. As a reviewer I get annoyed when the authors have not taken the time to format the manuscript correctly and it suggests to me that they do not have enough attention to detail. As an Editor, I regularly send back manuscripts for formatting to be corrected before I will send it for review. This is common in my discipline, where many journals employ editorial office staff to check these basic issues before it is even assigned to an Editor. Basically I do no understand why formatting the manuscript correctly should be considered such a difficult task.