Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)
2021-03-30 07:20:55 UTC
[[Mod. note -- I apologise for the delay in posting this article,
which arrived in my moderation inbox on 2021-Mar-26. I need to set
up a better mail-filtering system so I don't overlook things. :)
-- jt]]
Having been severely disappointed by the extremely low quality of
production by two astronomy journals (at least one of which didn't have
such problems several years ago), I'm interested in whether others have
had similar problems and whether there is some journal which gets it
right.
My main complaints are new errors introduced by the typesetters and not
following their own rules. It requires several proofs until the final
version essentially converges on my accepted manuscript. They change
the style to conflict with their own macros (LaTeX class and BibTeX
style).
There is no reason for this; the only explanation is incompetence,
probably caused by outsourcing to people obviously unfamiliar with the
types of articles they are supposed to produce.
Any journal which meets the following criteria would be fine:
o There are no charges to authors.
o At a minimum, the author's accepted manuscript can be made
available on a personal webserver no later than official
publication. (Ideally, something equivalent to the final version
could be put on a public webserver after acceptance. I don't care
about preprint (i.e. before acceptance) policies.)
o Personal LaTeX macros can be used.
o Copyright should stay with the author or a non-profit
institution.
o The proof must show what changes are made.
Ideally, the journals LaTeX macros would produce something which is
essentially identical to the final output. At the proof stage, someone
would check for typos and so on; those should be corrected, but no other
changes made.
which arrived in my moderation inbox on 2021-Mar-26. I need to set
up a better mail-filtering system so I don't overlook things. :)
-- jt]]
Having been severely disappointed by the extremely low quality of
production by two astronomy journals (at least one of which didn't have
such problems several years ago), I'm interested in whether others have
had similar problems and whether there is some journal which gets it
right.
My main complaints are new errors introduced by the typesetters and not
following their own rules. It requires several proofs until the final
version essentially converges on my accepted manuscript. They change
the style to conflict with their own macros (LaTeX class and BibTeX
style).
There is no reason for this; the only explanation is incompetence,
probably caused by outsourcing to people obviously unfamiliar with the
types of articles they are supposed to produce.
Any journal which meets the following criteria would be fine:
o There are no charges to authors.
o At a minimum, the author's accepted manuscript can be made
available on a personal webserver no later than official
publication. (Ideally, something equivalent to the final version
could be put on a public webserver after acceptance. I don't care
about preprint (i.e. before acceptance) policies.)
o Personal LaTeX macros can be used.
o Copyright should stay with the author or a non-profit
institution.
o The proof must show what changes are made.
Ideally, the journals LaTeX macros would produce something which is
essentially identical to the final output. At the proof stage, someone
would check for typos and so on; those should be corrected, but no other
changes made.