Reimagining the Journal Manuscript Submission Process

In academic publishing, the manuscript submission process is a gateway between discovery and dissemination, connecting researchers with editors, reviewers, and ultimately, readers around the world. However, behind the presumably simple act of pressing the “submit” button lies a surprisingly complex journey – a journey involving diverse formatting requirements, metadata, declarations, editorial checks, and increasingly, questions about how the manuscript itself was created.

With the volume of global research growing at a phenomenal rate and new technologies transforming the way papers are written and assessed, this gateway is now cracking under increasing pressure, and stakeholders across the scholarly ecosystem are all paying the price in different ways. Systems that were originally designed to process manuscripts efficiently are now being asked to do so much more; identify the right research, maintain rigorous standards, perform triage, support increasingly complex workflows and navigate the opportunities and threats presented by AI, to name just a few.

At a time when technology should be making manuscript submission less cumbersome, these processes have arguably become more complex and time-consuming for all parties, with more friction and bottlenecks at every juncture. Here we examine the main pain points in the manuscript submission process and discover how these persistent problems may be addressed.

The hard labor of submissions

The burden of manuscript submission is not simply the number of fields an author has to complete. It is the responsibility we increasingly place on authors to understand and navigate a complex set of publishing requirements, often with one corresponding author carrying that administrative load on behalf of an entire research team.

Those requirements have evolved significantly. Pre-submission checks are no longer concerned only with whether a manuscript follows the correct style or formatting conventions. Increasingly, publishers need to establish whether essential information around ethics, funding, competing interests, data availability, authorship and research integrity is present and complete. These are far more meaningful questions to resolve early in the publishing process.

The opportunity is to make those checks valuable to authors rather than burdensome. If information can be extracted directly from a manuscript and presented for confirmation, authors should not have to enter it again. If something important appears to be missing, identifying it before submission gives the author an opportunity to address it when it is simplest to do so. This moves submission away from being an administrative hurdle and towards becoming an intelligent quality gateway, reducing downstream queries and send-backs, shortening turnaround times, and creating a better experience for both authors and editorial teams.

Speaking different languages

Arguably the most significant issue relates to the manuscript files themselves. A manuscript will often begin life as a Word, PDF, or LaTeX document, contain figures in separate image files and supplementary data in other formats. Once submitted, information may need to move between submission platforms, editorial systems, peer review tools and production workflows, with every point of transition providing a fresh possibility for information to be lost, duplicated or incorrectly interpreted.

While structured content is well established later in the publishing lifecycle, manuscripts still typically begin their journey as static files. There is a significant opportunity in bringing structure much further upstream. If content can be understood by machines from the moment it is submitted, information can be validated, enriched and reused as it moves through peer review and production, rather than repeatedly interpreted and transformed at each stage. Structuring content earlier therefore does more than improve handoffs: it creates the foundation for a publishing process in which manuscripts become progressively more publication-ready from the very beginning.

A brighter future

Taken together, these challenges point to an opportunity to rethink submission. Rather than asking authors to repeatedly enter information, systems can extract and validate what is already there, identify important gaps before submission, and structure content so it can move more intelligently through the publishing process.

At KGL, this is the future we’re working towards with Smart Submission. By combining intelligent guidance, automated extraction and validation, and structured content from the point of upload, we can reduce the burden on authors, help manuscripts become review-ready sooner, and streamline the work that follows.

Ultimately, the opportunity extends beyond submission itself. The earlier content can be understood, validated and structured, the closer we move towards a publishing process in which manuscripts become progressively publication-ready, with publication at acceptance as the ultimate goal.

To find out more about Smart Submission, click here.

Kate Horgan is Director, Peer Review Systems at KGL. She has extensive experience in scholarly publishing with a focus on technologies, having served as Director of Client Services and Director of Product Management for peer review and production workflow products, Editorial Manager and ProduXion Manager. At KGL, Kate helps commercial, university press, and society publishers in developing and leveraging innovative technologies to meet customer needs, fostering scalable, adaptable solutions for the evolving scholarly publishing landscape. She can be reached at info@kwglobal.com.