It’s been a simmering issue for a while, but in the world of scientific journals, the insistence on manuscript submissions complying with a dense and ever-growing list of formatting and document structural requirements is now being seriously questioned, as Claire Neumann, Director of Scholarly Publications at the American College of Gastroenterology, writes in EON (https://eon.pubpub.org/pub/rxgj9cv1/release/1?readingCollection=06258156).
The ACG’s format-free submission policy sounds like a sensible direction to move in – authors are only required to present the later revised draft of the manuscript in the journal’s specific formatting style. Sounds great, but extra vigilance may be needed to monitor the boundaries of ‘format-free’ and prevent accepted manuscripts from being routinely delayed in the production stage because of missing elements or unsuitable formatting.