OK, take a trip with me to the bluesky zone.

Imagine that instead of you submitting the same paper to 5 journals, each of which use different submission tools, and spending days on formatting, accounting for word lengths, and fiddling references, there was another system.

Instead, you submit your paper to a centralised online repository. From there you select which journal you want it to go to and it is delivered in a standard format to be sent off for review. If it gets rejected you can submit to the next journal down on your list (handily sorted by impact factor) and so on you go. Until you find a journal that wants your paper. Then, and only then, do you have to change the format to suit their style, and the centralised repository is incredibly helpful. Better than reference manager, it puts your references and your text into exactly the style they want. It does an automated check for things that the journal doesn’t like, and it automatically tracks changes for revisions.

Just for giggles, when you get your review back you rate the quality of the review so that editors know who are making constructive comments and who are just suppressing competition. Heck, maybe even provide some guidance for how to be a reviewer and provide feedback to reviewers on the quality of their reviews!

Now a system like that would save me say 5 days per paper per year sat fiddling with Word as opposed to doing actual science. It would give me greater confidence that my paper has been rejected on scientific merit rather than personal squabbles. Now I don’t know about you, but I would happily pay an annual subscription for a service like that.

Benchpress? Manuscript central? Are you listening?! We are the content providers, it’s our output that keeps your stock price happy. So why are we doing mundane repetitive tasks that could be automated?