ABOVE: © ISTOCK.COM, SKARIE20
Paper submission and the peer review system have changed dramatically with the arrival of the internet and electronic correspondence. Most young scientists have never experienced the real pain that was hand typewriting text and references, drawing figures, making glossy-print photographs, and sending these all by regular mail to a journal. Rewriting papers and references in that way, months after submission, was probably the worst task in the life of a scientist.
In those years there were reasons for the editors to ask that submission of a paper must be done with the double-spaced main text, tables, figure legends, and figures all sorted separately. However, with current technology there is not any reason to maintain such a completely obsolete system that uses up to 30 to 40 pages for a single manuscript. Nobody will accept to read a paper in a journal in this way, why should ...
