For authors, when preparing a scientific manuscript for submission to a journal, it can often be a time-consuming task to adjust formatting and style to comply with journal’s specific preferences; a requirement which creates additional work, and adds a non-scientific element to the review process which can influence acceptance.
For editorial offices and editors, it can also be a difficult task to develop journal websites, set standards and create instructions for submission to journals.
To help address both these difficulties, and take steps towards standardising instructions, Sylwia Ufnalska and Alison Terry have developed a simple table for journals to include at the start of their instructions for authors, which clearly displays the most essential information, e.g. word count, number of keywords, format of tables and figures.
The table and supporting details were published in EASE journal European Science Editing in April. We have now added the information, along with downloadable template and example files as a resource to our website in our Statements and Resources section, and included it in our Toolkit for Editors.
With this initiative, we hope to provide the academic community with a resource that improves clarity of presentation and greater consistency between journals, resulting in submitted articles being more likely to meet the basic requirements. This initiative is intended to save time for both authors and editors involved in scientific publishing.
Access the Submission Table page on our website for full details of this initiative.
Reference:
Ufnalska S, Terry A (2020) Proposed universal framework for more user-friendly author instructions. European Science Editing 46: e53477. https://doi.org/10.3897/ese.2020.e53477