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Nathan Connell: Why Format Free Publishing Still Demands Formatting?

Nathan Connell/LinkedIn

Aug 26, 2026, 14:15

Nathan Connell: Why Format Free Publishing Still Demands Formatting?

Nathan Connell, Clinical Chief of Hematology at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, shared on LinkedIn:

” ‘Format–free submission‘ may be one of the best changes academic publishing has made in recent years. At least in theory.

For anyone who regularly submits manuscripts, journal-specific formatting can consume a surprising amount of time: changing citation styles, reorganizing title pages, adjusting spacing, moving tables and figures, renumbering references, and complying with requirements that often have little bearing on whether the science is rigorous, important, or clearly communicated.

Format-free submission was supposed to address this. The premise is simple: if the manuscript contains the necessary elements, is readable, and uses a consistent reference style, authors can submit it for peer review without first converting it into a journal-specific production format. But implementation remains remarkably inconsistent.

I recently submitted a manuscript to a journal whose instructions explicitly allow free–format submission and state that references may be submitted in any consistent style. The manuscript was returned before peer review because it was 1.5-spaced rather than double-spaced and because the references had not yet been converted to the journal’s preferred numbering format.

Neither change is difficult. That is not really the point.

Multiply 20 or 30 minutes of unnecessary formatting by thousands of manuscripts, multiple journals, resubmissions after rejection, and several rounds of submission, and we are collectively spending an enormous amount of researcher time on work that adds essentially nothing to scientific quality.
This seems particularly difficult to justify in a highly profitable scholarly publishing ecosystem in which authors provide the research, writing, peer review, and much of the editorial expertise.

There will always be legitimate submission requirements: complete reporting, ethical statements, disclosures, readable figures, appropriate metadata, and adherence to research-integrity standards. Those matter.

But typography and reference punctuation before a manuscript has even been reviewed? If journals advertise format-free submission, it should actually be format-free. And perhaps we should go further: journal-specific production formatting should largely begin after a manuscript is accepted, not before editors and reviewers have decided whether the science merits publication.

I’m curious how others are experiencing this. Has format-free submission meaningfully reduced the administrative burden of publishing for you, or have we mostly added another layer of instructions describing a process that still isn’t truly format–free?”

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