Put science first and formatting later.

Abstract

Since the first scientific journals, Philosophical Transactions and Journal des scavans, were founded in 1665, scholarly journals have been the primary means by which scientists disseminate their results. In 2014, approximately 34,550 scholarly peer‐reviewed journals collectively published about 2.5 million scientific papers [1]. Most of these journals have stringent formatting guidelines that authors must adhere to when submitting an article; manuscripts can even be rejected for not following these guidelines [2], [3]. The average rejection rate for biomedical journals is 62% (Fig 1) [4], [5]. Some of the much sought‐after journals have rejection rates of 90% or higher [6], [7]. After rejection, authors have to reformat their manuscript when they submit to a new journal, which can be repeated several times, as part of a process commonly referred to as “Journal Shopping” [8]. These unnecessary cycles of “reformat and resubmit” consume a large amount of scientists’ time and resources [6], and journal shopping has a significant impact on the speed of scientific communication [8]. For instance, with an average rejection rate of 62% for the 2.5 million articles published every year, and an hour …