I’ve never run into a submission process that is THAT picky - with checkboxes for taxa or a need for Windows 7. And I’ve certainly never seen one that doesn’t let you save! Such egregious problems should certainly be fixed.
The issue I’ve run into most frequently is image formatting. For instance, sometimes the image is fine in itself, but the automatic system obscures part of it with the line numbers or header when it creates the PDF, so you have to give the image bizarrely large borders (something the submission instructions don’t warn you about). A few years ago I encountered one that requested images of a particular size in inches - even though digital images can be resized, so what you want is a particular resolution. Also, many still request fax numbers as well as email and mailing addresses, even though I’ve never been faxed anything from a journal. But most will still accept the paper if one leaves that box blank. Those are mainly small annoyances, though. Journals that are part of a larger “family” (like Ecology, Ecological Monographs, and the other ESA published journals) tend to have a fairly streamlined and consistent submission process. It may well be that smaller journals have fewer staff and resources to deal with issues like updating their submission websites. If it is one that has been around a while (especially if it still has print versions) I wouldn’t worry too much about a paper vanishing - something like JSTOR would probably pick it up. However, if it ENTIRELY online and has a terrible website…it certainly wouldn’t give a prospective author confidence. Emily Moran UC Merced On Jul 22, 2015, at 10:20 PM, David Duffy <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I have noticed (albeit a small sample size) recently that several on-line journals have rigid, time consuming and picky processes for paper submission. To submit a paper, one is required to format for publication in an idiosyncratic style, one that is not necessarily shared by other journals. This would be fine after acceptance but it is a tremendous waste of time beforehand. Second the submitting formats are rigid. If one can't give the desired responses one can't move forward. One admission process required taxon identification but didn't include the avian order I was concerned with. Another placed Hawaii in Polynesia, not the US. There may be cogent arguments for this but a journal submission should not be an exercise in geopolitical tiddlywinks. Several require email addresses for all authors, not so subtly discriminating against folks in developing countries that might not have easy or stable access to the Internet. Others require one to sign off concerning a wide range of compliance and conflict of interest concerns that may or may not apply. Some submission processes seem to work only with specific browsers but the editors either don't know this or don't see it necessary to tell one that they are still locked into Windows 7. Finally some allow you to save and return but others don't. The last is especially sadistic. How much of this information is truly necessary when deciding whether to send a paper out for review, assuming sending out for reviewing really happens? An ethical approach for electronic journal submission would be to allow submissions in some simplified format: title, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, acknowledgments, literature cited. If the paper is accepted, bring on the compliance and conflict of interest assurances, literature (or reference) cited formats, unit abbreviations, use of parentheses and so on. If all these data are truly necessary up front, perhaps a measure of an on-line journal's quality might be whether it actually knows how to handle things on-line. If not, in ten years, one's paper may well vanish into the cloud along with the journal. I would welcome replies from journal editors if they feel I am being unfair. -- David Duffy 戴大偉 (Dài Dàwěi) Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit Botany University of Hawaii 3190 Maile Way Honolulu Hawaii 96822 USA 1-808-956-8218<tel:1-808-956-8218>
