Your Paper, Your Way โ now available to all journals
2013๋ 6์ 26์ผ
์ ์: Catrional Fennell, Daniel Gill
Becoming more author-friendly
Over the past year, journals enrolled in theย Your Paper, Your Wayย pilot have been allowing their authors to do just that โ submit their papers without strict formatting or referencing requirements. Your Paper, Your Way was the brainchild of Sir Kelvin Davies, PhD,DSc, Editor-in-Chief ofย Free Radical Biology & Medicine.opens in new tab/window He introduced the concept in mid-2011 and, in 2012, we extended the option to a further 41 journals across all disciplines. Their experiences have proved so encouraging that, as of this July, all Elsevier journals will have the opportunity to join this exciting project.
Your Paper, Your Wayย โ the origins
Anthony Newman, a Publisher for Elsevierโs Life Sciences journals, was present at the annual editorsโ meeting ofย Free Radical Biology & Medicine, when Davies came up with his unusual suggestion. In an article onย Elsevier Connect, Newman recalled: โWe were sitting around the table talking about whatโs good and whatโs bad. Weโve had a lot of push-back from authors who say, โI know you have a high rejection rate, but I have to spend a lot of time just to submit a manuscriptโ. We talked about the fact that we are forcing them to put it into our format when the chance of it being accepted is just 20%. It was at that point that Kelvin suggested we try allowing contributors to submit their manuscriptsย withoutย the formatting.โ
Anthony Newman
Davies highlighted the benefits ofย Your Paper, Your Wayย (YPYW) in both a video editorial (above) andย a postย on the Editorsโ Update Short Communications board back in March 2012. He explained: โAlthough standard formats do make it just that little bit easier for editors and reviewers to see everything in the correct style, the reality is that the advantage is very small, and we should really be focusing on the quality of science and not the format. For authors the difference is very significantโฆ an easier submission process not only saves time and effort but may also allow authors to achieve faster publication speeds.โ That easier submission process could also help to alleviate one of authorsโ key concerns - when Elsevierโs Research & Academic Relations team surveyed researchers about what they find most frustrating, nearly one in three chose โpreparing manuscriptsโ.
Feedback from editors
Once theย YPYWย pilot was underway, we asked the editors involved to share their thoughts on the project - 33 responded. Their feedback proved very positive, with the majority of editors reporting no increase in workload (see Figure 2).ย ย In fact, 95.5% of editors agreed that the newย Your Paper, Your Wayย author instructions were clear and easy to follow. Their comments included:ย โGreat feature and very helpful for authors.โย โHighly recommend to do this and to in fact extend this to all submissions.โ โMuch easier submission process - if you have 10 figures you can easily see them in the right order.โ
Your Paper, Your Wayย โ the statistics
80% of editors surveyed found that YPYW manuscripts require less or the same amount of time as standard submissions.
70% of editors surveyed found that YPYW manuscripts are either the same or easier to work with than standard submissions.
87.5% of authors surveyed believed that YPYW reduces the amount of time typically taken to format and submit their paper
85% of authors surveyed found YPYW easy or extremely easy, compared to 51% of authors who chose traditional submission
Editors participating in the pilot were asked a series of questions related to theย YPYWย process. Their answers are captured in the pie charts below:
Becoming more author-friendly
Papers submitted via theย Your Paper, Your Wayย route still need to include the following key elements:
Title
Abstract
Introduction
Materials and methods
Results and discussion
References
Figures and figure legends
Any important ethical requirements, e.g. the Conflict of Interest declaration, are also still mandatory. As long as the references have all the necessary information, the author need not format according to a specific style because Elsevier will take care of that after acceptance.
Reflecting onย Free Radical Biology & Medicineโs experiences since they launched the pilot in July 2011, Davies said his journal had not received any complaints from reviewers, and many authors had sent letters of thanks and praise for the system.
Kelvin-Davies
Author uptake so far
From December 2012 to date, the 42 pilot journals have received around 51.5% of submissions via theย Your Paper, Your Wayย route. We expect this figure to increase as more authors become aware of the service. Authors who chose theย Your Paper, Your Wayย submission route commented:ย โWe chose to spend time on content instead of the โcorrect formatโ." โIt was simpler and faster than (the) traditional one. I think it is a good way to speed the process.โ โโฆtime consuming formatting work was not undertaken unnecessarily.โ โI didn't have to waste time with formatting before being sure about the acceptance.โย We also asked authors to let us know which submission option they intended to use in the future - 80% said they will either always use, or mostly use,ย YPYWย when it is available.
Feedback from reviewers
The pilot data suggests thatย Your Paper, Your Wayย is an author-friendly initiative that simplifies researchersโ lives. However, it is also important to ensure that the resulting papers do not complicate the review process. To evaluate the impact on reviewers, 165 responses from the Reviewer Feedback Programme (RFP) were analysed: 77 of these responses related to aย YPYWย submission, the remaining 88 to a traditional submission. There wereno significant differences in reviewer satisfaction based on any related criteria: "The review format and structure for review submission was helpful"; "I am very satisfied overall with my experience of reviewing"; "I could read the manuscript and figures clearly with no technical problems".
July 2013 - upscale to all journals
Based on the positive researcher feedback we have received, invitations are currently being sent to all journals to participate inย Your Paper, Your Way.ย If you havenโt already heard from your Publisher, they will be in contact shortly to discuss this further.
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