Some Journals Rejecting Office 2007 Format 474
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."
Word processors seem unsuited for this (Score:5, Interesting)
backlash (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
Office 2007 is Irritating right now... (Score:4, Interesting)
The amount of money that will be spent to rewrite code that works with Word 2007 will not be insignificant and the real down side is that we get virtually nothing for our effort!
Re:Why use Doc at all? (Score:3, Interesting)
Regarding generating PDF's, I'm not sure what you mean. We have the free Adobe Reader on our office computers. And Word does not have an option to save as PDF. For that, we have to pay Adobe.
Re:backlash (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Office is Microsoft's bread and butter. Everybody used Office so anyone wanting to work with other people had to be in the Office game. Even if there were alternatives that might have been better from a technical perspective, Office was already the 800lb gorilla. People were no more going to switch from Office than they would switch from QWERTY keyboards.
2. The international push by governments to move to an open document format is huge. To do business with these governments, now you're forced to use a different word processor. This sort of mandate helps to redefine the playing field. As you said, on it's own this is not a ballbuster for Microsoft.
3. As you mentioned, Office 2007 is a pain in the ass.
4. Vista sucks.
5. This is another killer factor: you can get Linux on the desktop now, and not just for geeks. I used to scratch my head wondering what people on Slashdot were talking about when they said they had Grandma running on Linux. Not anymore. The latest friendly distros like Ubuntu are ready for normal people to use. Everything they need to see is there, open, friendly, no muss, no fuss. If somebody told me I had to explain Ubuntu to my mom, my first response would no longer be "shoot me now."
While I don't think any of this is going to lead to the inevitable collapse of Microsoft in the coming weeks, I think it could be the start of a downward slide, at least in terms of operating system and office app markets. Historically speaking, powerful and unstoppable kingdoms/empires/corporations tend not to be destroyed from outside but from within. Laziness, neglect, a lack of imagination and vision, all of these things will hollow out the entity until a trifling problem could become the crisis that finally brings the end. The problems we're seeing right now could be the start of that. But given Microsoft's size and clout, I think we'll be waiting a long time for the final curtain.
Re:Office 2007 is Irritating right now... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Why use Doc at all? (Score:3, Interesting)
Conferences (and newer, smaller journals) tend to be different in that they really do use the author-submitted formatting, as a base or directly, as-is. Then exact formatting becomes an issue. Of course, look in any conference proceeding and you'll be astonished at the breadth of typographical design that still formally conforms to the same formatting instructions. It's often trivial to pick up the LaTeX-submitted papers (very strictly correct, but with a somewhat formal, old appearance) from early Word versions (thick-set fonts, spacing is all over the place, flush right never really is) and newer Word (OK; pretty neutral appearance though still with strange spacing variability between different elements).
We've had our own problems (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How strange (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why use Doc at all? (Score:1, Interesting)
-AC
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:
Re:Why use Doc at all? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't call her a push-over, but my wife is an experimental linguist who uses Word (and used Word for her diss). She uses a Mac, but generally upgrade to new versions as they come out to avoid problems reading docs from other people.
When she started working on her diss, I volunteered to learn LaTeX and BibTeX with her, to support her, bought a book on LaTeX, etc. But at the end of the day, she knew Word, and most of her colleagues and committee members used Word (especially the commenting and change-tracking features).
I've certainly known academics who used LaTeX, and even other stuff like roff. But most of the time, they use Word because the collaboration features are so much more robust, because that's what most people are familiar with, and all the journals accept it.
-Esme
Re:Why use Doc at all? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Word processors seem unsuited for this (Score:0, Interesting)
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.
IMO they should just upgrade and start accepting (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Collaboration features (Score:2, Interesting)
they use Word because the collaboration features are so much more robust, because that's what most people are familiar with, and all the journals accept it.
No, they use it because the journals demand it. I'm glad that's changing. Word is crazy, quirky and wastes the users time. It also forces you to use Windoze, which itself sucks life. You should know that from all the problems your wife has at times like this when there's no Mac version available.
For collaboration, subversion works great. If it has not already been worked into Open Office and others, it won't take much to do it. All of this is old hat for people who have been combining work from hundreds of people to make free software. The collaboration tools M$ introduced a couple of years ago are late and second rate as usual.
Re:Yawn squared (Score:3, Interesting)
It is just a thought BUT maybe they are using Macs - I run a Mac and the Mac version of Word excel, Power Point cannot read the new version of 2007 Office. There is no converter - yet. (Yes, I use Office - but it drives me nuts!) It seems to me that MS is going back to the bad old days of forcing upgrades by removing compatibilities.
Re:Word processors seem unsuited for this (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Word processors seem unsuited for this (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why use Doc at all? (Score:5, Interesting)