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Some Journals Rejecting Office 2007 Format
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Jun 02, 2007 08:15 PM
from the embrace-extend-extinguish-yourself dept.
from the embrace-extend-extinguish-yourself dept.
hormiga writes "Some scholarly journals are rejecting submissions made using new Office 2007 formats. Science and Nature are among publishers unwilling to deal with incompatibilities in the new formats, and recommend using older versions of Office or converting to older formats before submission. The new equation editor is cited as a specific problem. Rob Wier recommends that those publishers consider using ODF instead."
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Word processors seem unsuited for this (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Word processors seem unsuited for this (Score:5, Informative)
They are quite cognisant of TeX. There is extensive submission guidlines [sciencemag.org].
"Please do not send TeX or LaTeX files for your initial submission. Convert the files to PostScript or PDF instead. [Important: Screen legibility of the PostScript or PDF file is essential for rapid and thorough evaluation of your manuscript; please ensure that the .ps or .pdf file you generate from your TeX/LaTeX source does not include Type 3 bitmapped fonts.]
Although we do not accept TeX and LaTeX source for initial manuscript submission, these formats are acceptable for manuscripts that have been revised after peer review. To save time at this later stage, authors using these packages for their initial submission are encouraged to review our instructions for preparing text and tables using LaTeX."
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Re:Word processors seem unsuited for this (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Word processors seem unsuited for this (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, Office isn't nearly as good as people make it out to be. And LaTeX isn't nearly as hard; especially if you use one of the WYSIWYG editors.
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Re:Word processors seem unsuited for this (Score:5, Interesting)
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It's always a surprise (Score:4, Informative)
So use Lyx (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:So use Lyx (Score:5, Interesting)
But most importantly: the equations are treated like part of the text, so there's no clicking madly around the edges of invisible boxes that occasionally disappear to the end of the page just to edit something.
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TeX and Word. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's actually quite easy, if you use it regularly.
It's not just easy, it's a huge time saver. Trying to making a long Word DOC act right is a death by a thousand clicks and it never really works well. Open Office is better, but it is still clicky, clicky and can auto-wrong things. If you just have to have buttons to press, use Kile.
Word Perfect was a reasonable editor for the purpose, but it was slain long ago.
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Re:It's always a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
/me loads up technical document written using Word 95 while he was at university more than a decade ago. It works fine in any recent version of Word, and indeed in OpenOffice Writer.
/me tries running a technical document from the same period through his recently updated TeX installation. It fails: a couple of the packages are apparently obsolete now, and either no longer available via CTAN or at least no longer set up as standard with a mainstream TeX installation.
Sorry, looks like you're wrong on that one.
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backlash (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:backlash (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, there's a free one for other versions of Microsoft Office, but almost none for any other suite. Your logic is intriguing, all us nutjob nux/FOSS gearheads are so apathetic we don't want to accept it simply because it's different. No concept that some of us might be using other operating systems or have a different bottom line that dictates how and why we do things.
The rest of the world isn't as cut and dry as your tiny one.
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How strange (Score:5, Interesting)
What do you think might have given some of the publishers a backbone?
I'm assuming that they haven't actually converted to non-MS (or non-IBM) systems. That would be just too bizarre to believe. Do you think that they've actually noticed that non-MS systems can usually read files from 20 years ago without problems? Is this some sign of a pending movement in which more organizations will actually start standing up to the Market Leader?
Nah; it can't be. Something very strange must be going on behind the scene.
As a Mac guy... (Score:4, Interesting)
RTFA, please (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
It's not important that ... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more important that MS supports ODF.
Automatic Conversion (Score:5, Interesting)
I said yes, and in one click I was able to open the document up. I imagine the same holds true for the other Office apps, though I haven't tried it.
Re:Why use Doc at all? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not in a scientific field, but I am on the staff of a scholarly journal.
In my field, people don't even think about format. If you say "submit a paper," it's just assumed it will be in Word format. What's more, many scholarly papers are sufficiently complex that incompatibilities arise if you try to use OpenOffice or a variant to create those Word documents. If you are submitting a final product for something like a class, you can get around this by providing a PDF, but as journal articles face a lengthy editing process an editable format is required for submissions to journals.
If you asked our scholars for ODF, TeX, or anything else other than Word, they wouldn't even understand what you meant. If you are going to write something, you write it in Word, and hit "Save," and that's how things are written. You'd be amazed how many people ask me how I generate those weird PDFs... even though, if you have Adobe Reader installed, there is a PDF button in your Word toolbar. (And the people using Macs have a "PDF" button in the Print dialog box.)
I hate Word with a passion, although I've never used Word 2007, because it thinks it's smarter than me. (As OpenOffice so slavishly tries to imitate Word I have some of the same problems with it.) I'd use something else if it were remotely possible. But it's just... not, at least in my field.
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Re:Why use Doc at all? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm in law. Feel free to make your own joke here.
Many of our scholars, while they generate terrific scholarly work, are just not computer-competent. I absolutely cannot imagine getting them to successfully install OpenOffice, or their IT departments (which are frequently not much better) to support it. (These are folks who call for support to ask things like "How do I make a table?") If you required ODF, you would lose some submissions from those who actually read the requirement, and get 99% of your others in .doc format (as I said, people don't even think about format -- if they are writing something, they just open Word, hit "Save," and send it.)
Every school I know about buys a site license for MS Office, and either extends that to students (at considerable expense) or *requires* students to purchase MS Office along with their computers. Honestly, the assumption of Word is so ingrained, trying to challenge it in the legal academic field would be emptying the ocean with a bucket.
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Re: Why use Doc at all? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Why use Doc at all? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nature: http://npg.nature.com/nature/submit/finalsubmissi
# MS Word document (.doc) (preferred)
# Adobe Acrobat (.pdf)
# Plain ASCII text (.txt)
# Rich Text Format (.rtf)
# WordPerfect document (.wpd)
# PostScript (.ps)
# Encapsulated postcript (.eps)
# HTML document (.htm)
# MS Excel spreadsheet (.xls)
# GIF image (.gif)
# JPEG image (.jpg)
# TIFF image (.tif)
# MS PowerPoint slide (.ppt)
# QuickTime movie (.mov) (preferred)
# Flash movie (.swf)
# Audio file (.wav)
# MPEG/MPG animation (.mpg)
Science: http://www.sciencemag.org/about/authors/prep/prep_ init.dtl [sciencemag.org]
.pdf (Adobe Portable Document Format)
.ps (PostScript)
.eps (Encapsulated PostScript)
.prn (Printer file for a PostScript printer)
.doc (Microsoft Word, version 6.0 and higher) -- note that we cannot accept files in Word 2007 (.docx) format, as explained here.
.wpd (WordPerfect, version 7.0 and higher)
*
*
*
*
*
*
Science also specifically makes a point to mention:
Also, FTA, the reason that Word 2007 isn't being accepted is:
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Re:Why use Doc at all? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Why use Doc at all? (Score:5, Insightful)
We're not being elitist, are we?
You owe me a nickel. I know several people with various scientific PhDs (mostly in Physics and Chemistry) who use Word on a regular basis. They know and use TeX, too, but that doesn't mean that they don't use Word when it's the best tool for the job.
And, by the way, none of them would ever think of the people they work with as "computer Inferiors" because they don't want to screw with TeX files.
You know what? I'd rather that people not send me either. Don't send me ODF, don't send me DOC. Send me a damn PDF.
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Different scientist. (Score:5, Informative)
The difference is that people writing in those papres, id est Physicist and Mathematicians, are very well versed in informatics. Most of them have at least some basic knowledge of Unices, and at least do program in Mathlab and a little bit in Fortran.
They can understand what TeX is, and given the quantity of formulae they have to work with, they understand the advantages that TeX has to offer regarding them.
Nature is much more about life science. In those field you can find scientist which are way much more dexterous in manipulating micropipettes than computers. Most of them see computers as things that just have to work. They fire it up and use the mail client (Outlook express. Thunderbird is you have luck), browse a little bit (Internet Explorer or Firefox depending on the university) to find papres that they won't read on screen anyway but print on paper, and write with a word processor (i.e.: Word). They only time they write with anything else is... when they fire up PowerPoint to prepare a poster (Yes. There are tons of people abusing Powerpoint to do posters instead of using a proper publishing tools).
The couple of them who feel enlightened and feel the urge to be different than the mass of sheeps, they buy Macs and install "Microsoft Office for Mac" on them.
Most of them don't realise that there other thing besides Word to handle text documents. And they all feel too much accustomed to Word to switch to anything else. They are the people who are upset when universities try to push for OpenOffice.org, because, they say, University should prepare their student to be proficient with tools that they will encounter later in professional life, and Word is what those student will find (as if being proficient with word processing in general was much different than learning Word down to the button position and being completely lost each time microsoft decides to change the layout for each new generation).
Want a worse example ? Medical doctors (I'm one). Some of the fellow doctors I've seen still do all their document formatting using space bar. There are highly considered specialists with a long list of publication that smash repeatedly on the space bar until things seem grossly aligned on screen. And then don't understand while the document doesn't come the same when they print it. Or open it in another version of Word.
Those are the mythical "80%" people that only use "20%" of the feature of an office suite. Not a different set of "20%" than anyone else. The basic "20%" that form the common ground of any office suite. The "20%" of features that Word shares with Notepad.
They have no concept of "styles" or flagging "titles" (they probably imagine an "index" is something you write tediously by hand. Usually they transmit that job to interns. Who go though the document painfully fixing the format so the "index" function works as intended).
And you want them to switch to TeX when submitting papers to Life-Science journal ? They will just faint at the idea of launching something that doesn't look exactly like what they are used to on screen, and will have a hard time to find out which is the new icon to click to save.
And don't let me start about the level of maths and statistics we learn in medical school (near to absolute zero). Most of us hire a statistician whenever some button on a calculator need to be pressed. There's no such thing as a need for a better formula-writing environment.
Thankfully the arrival of bioinformatics, medical informatics, medical imaging and such computer intensive speciality in the field of life science will bring a little bit more computer litteracy. (Thankfully for me that are fields that I'm studying too, so there's plenty of job opportuni
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Re:Doc Formats? -- Counter-example (Score:5, Informative)
I -think- they'll allow PDF or postscript submission of the whole thing, but it's slower to process, and they might add charges.
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