Replies

• Karl Ziemelis

  25 September 2007 | 10:51

  First up, I should make absolutely clear that we do not reject newly submitted papers on the basis that they are incorrectly formatted. We might reject a paper simply because it is far too long (text and/or figures), if it is not immediately obvious to us how it could be shortened to fit in with our length limits. In such instances, we would also make clear to the authors that length is the primary reason for rejection, and then it is up to them to figure out whether or not it is possible to bring their paper down to an acceptable size.

  The main purpose of our encouraging authors to follow our formatting guidelines from the outset is to ensure that the submitted manuscripts are as clear and as focussed as possible. This is to help the editors and (in the event of the paper being sent out for review) the referees absorb the information as efficiently as possible, and to save the author time later on if the manuscript is accepted. Everyone’s time is precious, and there are time-consuming steps at every stage of the process. To give you a specific example, the reason that we ask for the full titles to be given in the references is that it gives the editor/referee (and ultimately the reader) valuable information about what a particular cited article is actually about, and thus whether or not it is one that they actually need to track down and read: the saving in time to the authors for not including this information at the outset is relatively minor, but the cost in time to the editors and referees is potentially quite large.

  But I think you understand all of this already, and your point is more to do with the ‘fiddly’ style points (how to punctuate references etc…). My answer here is be pragmatic – if the paper is already written, and of approximately the allowed length, then just go ahead and submit – the fiddly stylistic details can always be sorted out at a later stage.

  Finally, your suggestion of a cross-journal uniform style for submissions is well taken, and is essentially already in place for the Nature-branded journals. But whether this could be made to work across different publishers is a very different matter… the phrase “herding cats” springs to mind.

• Laurie Dempsey

  25 September 2007 | 17:18

  I’ll just make a comment in addition to Karl’s reply. Many times the Nature Research journals will receive submissions of manuscripts that have been previously submitted and perhaps even reviewed at Nature. Often the rationale for ultimately rejecting the manuscript is that the findings are not of sufficiently broad interest and would be better suited for a specialty journal. In these cases, authors have the option to transfer the manuscript electronically to another NPG publication, complete with the reviewers’ comments, if they so wish. There is no need to alter the format or manuscript length. A link to transfer your manuscript can be found at the bottom of the decision letter.

  However, the main point is the same as made by Karl. Generally we do not worry so much at the time of submission about the format of the piece. Rather we look for whether the experimental question addressed in the manuscript is of wide interest to our research community, the work is novel and it makes a substantial advance beyond previous work. It helps if authors can concisely convey to the editors and reviewers why they think their work is suitable for a top-tier journal.

  More on the manuscript transfer service can be found at http://www.nature.com/authors/author_services/transfer_manuscripts.html

• Laurie Dempsey

  25 September 2007 | 17:57

  Here is the full link for manuscript transfer