I am campaigning to change the page limits for ICCF Proceedings. Okay, it is not an earth-shaking issue, but I am campaigning. Steve Katinsky says the limit for ICCF-21 papers is 10 pages. Jean-Paul can make an exception.
I think 10 pages is too low. I strongly recommend a limit of 15 or 20. We should encourage authors to include more graphs, schematics, photos and data tables. There is hardly any reason to limit pages nowadays, with papers being published electronically. It made sense back when papers were printed on paper, and it cost money to print and distribute them. The only reasons to limit the length nowadays are: 1. To reduce the workload on peer-reviewers and copy editors (me, that is). When pages are filled with graphs and tables they take no extra work to review or edit. On the contrary, graphs and photos make it easier to understand the paper. 2. To keep the reader's interest from waning. People don't like to read long papers. Warn the author of this, and let him decide. We don't want people shrinking graphs and tables down so much they cannot be read, in an effort to meet an artificially low page limit. That would imposing the limits of the old technology on the new, for no reason, to no benefit. It is also a skeuomorph, which is an offense against aesthetics. (R.I.P. Steve Jobs.) I understand why people would not want papers 50 pages long or 100 pages long in a conference proceedings. But I think 10 is too low! Let me repeat this is against my own interests, since I am one of the people who has to read these papers several times, slogging through looking for subject-verb agreement. (Not content, mind you. Who cares about the content? Gamma rays, schmamma bays, it's all the same with me.) - Jed
