The more prestigious the journal, the more likely it is to have draconian word and even reference limits. (Just kidding, PLoS! You're totally prestigious too.) This is especially true of brief-format style articles, like the one GradAdvisor and I are currently writing.
I am by nature a follow-the-rules sort of person, but GradAdvisor had this to say as I proposed hacking our current manuscript down to the bone to meet the journal's requirements: Put in everything you want in the first version. Otherwise, you run the risk of pissing off reviewers by not including enough information for them to evaluate the paper properly. Also, if you cut the reference list to meet some arbitrary standard, and your reviewers' publications are the ones that get cut, you could be in trouble. If the manuscript is accepted, you can always trim later.
I find this advice both hilarious and frightening. Hilarious, because it's absurd to conjure a situation where critical information is included for the reviewers--but not for the final (hopefully larger?) audience. Frightening, because, same reason.
Is this how you also approach tight length limit manuscripts? Obviously try not to be egregiously beyond limits, but otherwise figure that you'll cut it down if necessary? And if so, do you think this is a bad sign of how publishing operates--pleasing the reviewers if not the world? (Not you, PLoS! I know you already thought about how terrible this is.)
Of course, besides better reviewer mojo and sheer laziness, there is another reason not to cut the manuscript to size quite yet: if it gets rejected, the next journal down the pipe has longer word limits.
15 years ago
17 comments:
Hm. I've gotten the same advice from my PI. "Trimming is easy!" he said... gah. That was the hardest part.
It's like the old saying "I could have written less if I'd had more time."
Being on a PC, I have to say that short papers are so much more pleasant to review. ;-) But in my experience, the more well-known the advisor, the more likely they're going to think that you can just ignore the rules and get away with it. (They may be right.)
Incidentally, in the CS world, it's more about page-limits than word/reference limits, so we tend to squeeze space between headings and, sadly, use smaller fonts. The references section of one paper in my queue is so small, I almost need a magnifying glass to read them. At least they cited my paper.
In our group whatever is trimmed usually end up in supporting information.
We basically send off just communications (page limit 2 including references) with only major figures and conclusions in a paper and whatever else in SI. That's kind of extended abstract of the work.
Most journals in my field make you tell them upfront the character/word count . I do NOT think flat out lying is wise. if you can get away without lying, a don't ask don't tell policy is fine, but....
I'm in CS too and I definitely have a tendency to include more material in the submitted version than in the final version, precisely because of page limit restrictions. The submitted version has to be the right length, but it doesn't need to have authors (for double-blind review), keywords, ACM categories, or acknowledgments. When it comes time to submit the final version, I have to find a way to get all that stuff in there despite the paper already being packed as tightly as possible. Something has to get cut.
The truth is, some of the material in the submitted version is directed squarely at some of the people I think are likely to be reviewers. I wouldn't include it at all if I didn't know those people and their idiosyncratic hangups.
Some journal submission systems make it impossible to get away with this without flat out lying, which is not a good idea. In cases where the system doesn't make you lie, I wouldn't worry about word, page, figure, or reference limits. Your advisor is correct.
Yeah, I think the advice is sound. I just wonder a bit about the publishing culture that has led to it. Information there for the reviewers but not for the eventual readers, except maybe in supplemental? But this is part of a larger rant against supplemental information as a means of information storage anyhow.
This year, and for the first time, I managed to get a paper into one of the high-prestige, low-word-count type of journal. I actually followed the limits, and cut a couple of references that were really painful to cut. When I got the reviews, both reviewers demanded a couple of things I had cut, soo... When I resubmitted the manuscript, I mentioned in the cover letter how everybody wanted refs X and Y, and there was no other way to cut others, so it got published with 2 extra refs and a few words over.
I do think no matter *what* you do, reviewers will bitch about something not being there. So might as well have them unanimous about the same thing.
This was our recent strategy at one of the journals you're referring to... seems to have worked out ok for us, but PI also claimed that the "trimming" (we had to cut the words by nearly half!) was the easy part. And then he took close to 3 weeks to get to a first draft of the shortened manuscript, with many delays explained as it turning out to be much more difficult than he anticipated....
Oh, and as for the debate about whether word count and reference limits are good/bad, I have to say that most manuscripts that come out of our lab (when I get to see both the raw initial submission and the final product) are much improved, easier to read and more to the point in their final form. So I actually think they're good to have in place (with a bit of flexibility, at the editor's discretion of course). It also helps us as scientists learn to explain ourselves more concisely.
Jenn, with word limits perhaps, but how in the world do reference limits help us be more concise? They only help us be less scholarly.
I totally agree with your point, (which everyone else seems to have ignored?).
This kind of behavior implies that the rest of us can safely rely on these 3 faceless reviewers to make the right decision based on information we never get to see.
And in reality, my bet is,
a) we can't
b) we're missing a LOT of information because of these stupid journal length limits.
It has all been paid for, mostly with taxpayer money, but it's essentially unpublished results. WTF.
Worst of all, the limits and formats are holdovers from pre-internet days, and it's really really hard for me to see how they can justify not updating the formats drastically.
Science depends WAYYY too much on these journals and assumptions about "good faith" and honor codes that just aren't not reliable in the face of aggressive competition and diminishing returns for honesty.
But in terms of the larger rant re: supplemental, I totally agree.
Not so long ago, somebody sent me a paper saying it was a pre-print of a Nature pub, and wasn't it so impressive.
ALL the controls were in the supplemental section, which was not provided to me.
I said I CAN'T EVALUATE THIS. IT MIGHT BE COMPLETE CRAP FOR ALL I CAN TELL.
I think all of this kind of crap continues because of reputation of the authors. Assumptions are made that certain people's labs "always" do the right controls or that they "know what they're doing".
And let me tell you, speaking from first hand experience working in and collaborating with some of these famous labs, THEY DON'T.
Argh.
Good points MsPhD... We have about 3 times as many supplemental "display items" as main paper items. But they are all there, in the supplemental information that you can download from the journal website along with the article. At least nothing got moved to "data not shown" which is a personal peeve....
And DrJ&MrsH, I agree that reference limits are the pits. I can see putting some sort of self-referencing limit, but if your work is based on previous studies from others (and let's face it, all of our work is, to some extent) then we should be allotted space to acknowledge that in our articles. I hate that we have to reference one or two reviews instead of the primary literature...
Jenn, here's a question about supplemental data. First, do you think it's a good idea to put the burden of seeing all the controls etc on the person reading the paper--who has to find the right website and download another pdf (if they didn't do it simultaneously with the first download)?
Second, consider how information transfer has changed in our lifetime. The file format of PDF wasn't even invented twenty years ago. What if, in another twenty years, there's a much better format than PDF out there, and we all switch over to using that? And then Acrobat Reader becomes this semi-defunct program that you ONLY ever use for reading this weird Supplemental Information online? And then Acrobat gets fed up with supporting a defunct program and stops updating it to be compatible with each new operating system iteration?
These things terrify me. And, I really hate downloading an extra file.
Hey
I just saw the follow up comment....
Re: supplemental material. I have to say, while I do see your point, (ideally) supplemental material is just that, supplemental. It's not required to be shown in order to confirm the main statements/conclusions that the paper is making. I do this it's valuable for the scientists that do the work to help separate main text experiments from supporting evidence for the reader. Otherwise you'd just end up with a main text of 20 figures.... It would be as if every publication was the length (or much longer) of a Cell paper.... (but maybe I'm the only one who shys away from reading articles that are *so* long when not directly related to things I'm working on)
But I think your original point was about the "short communication/letters" format publications with super small limits for figures and text. I think the solution there is for researchers/editors/publishers to print short communications there, not whole PhD/postdoc lab experiences of multiple researchers over multiple years. The scope for such a format should really be for shorter, less complete stories (then we could all publish more often!)
But that's just my 2 cents. How's everything else going for you over the holidays? Feeling any symptoms yet? Hopefully nothing too harsh. Happy New Year
Basically anything that's removed later to "trim" I imagine would go to supplementary information- as you say important information that the reviewers were party to be removed later?
Post a Comment