PLoS ONE plos plosone PLOS ONE 1932-6203 Public Library of Science San Francisco, CA USA 10.1371/journal.pone.0223116 PONE-D-19-20185 Research Article Research and analysis methodsResearch designSurvey researchSurveysSocial sciencesEconomicsLabor economicsSalariesScience policyScience and technology workforceCareers in researchScientistsPeople and placesPopulation groupingsProfessionsScientistsResearch and analysis methodsScientific publishingResearch and analysis methodsResearch assessmentPeer reviewPeople and placesPopulation groupingsProfessionsComputer and information sciencesComputer networksInternetSocial sciencesSociologyCommunicationsSocial communicationSocial mediaComputer and information sciencesNetwork analysisSocial networksSocial mediaSocial sciencesSociologySocial networksSocial media Scientific sinkhole: The pernicious price of formatting Cost of formatting in scientific publishing LeBlanc Allana G. Conceptualization Methodology Writing – original draft 1 * Barnes Joel D. Conceptualization Formal analysis Methodology Writing – review & editing 1 Saunders Travis J. Conceptualization Methodology Writing – review & editing 2 Tremblay Mark S. Conceptualization Methodology Writing – review & editing 1 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5607-5736 Chaput Jean-Philippe Conceptualization Methodology Writing – original draft 1 Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group, CHEO Research Institute, Ottawa, ON, Canada Department of Applied Human Sciences, University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, PE, Canada Abbasi Alireza Editor UNSW, AUSTRALIA

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

 * E-mail: allanagwleblanc@gmail.com 26 9 2019 2019 14 9 e0223116 24 7 2019 13 9 2019 2019 LeBlanc et al This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Objective

To conduct a time-cost analysis of formatting in scientific publishing.

 Design

International, cross-sectional study (one-time survey).

 Setting

Internet-based self-report survey, live between September 2018 and January 2019.

 Participants

Anyone working in research, science, or academia and who submitted at least one peer-reviewed manuscript for consideration for publication in 2017. Completed surveys were available for 372 participants from 41 countries (60% of respondents were from Canada).

 Main outcome measure

Time (hours) and cost (wage per hour x time) associated with formatting a research paper for publication in a peer-reviewed academic journal.

 Results

The median annual income category was US$61,000–80,999, and the median number of publications formatted per year was four. Manuscripts required a median of two attempts before they were accepted for publication. The median formatting time was 14 hours per manuscript, or 52 hours per person, per year. This resulted in a median calculated cost of US$477 per manuscript or US$1,908 per person, per year.

 Conclusions

To our knowledge, this is the first study to analyze the cost of manuscript formatting in scientific publishing. Our results suggest that scientific formatting represents a loss of 52 hours, costing the equivalent of US$1,908 per researcher per year. These results identify the hidden and pernicious price associated with scientific publishing and provide evidence to advocate for the elimination of strict formatting guidelines, at least prior to acceptance.

 The authors received no specific funding for this work. Data Availability All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files. Introduction

Publishing scientific findings is an important part of the scientific process and dates back to as early as 1665 [1]. Since before this time, scientists have been using the peer-review process to share their findings, document their successes, translate knowledge, and share research across fields of study. Top journals may reach hundreds of thousands of people across the globe whereas lower ranked journals may lead to research gathering virtual dust in a far corner of the internet. Many funding bodies and institutions also require scientists to publish their results in a timely manner in an effort to account for public funds, and to increase transparency in research. However, modern day scientific publishing has become an industry unto itself, with thousands of journals to choose from and each of these journals with its own unique set of formatting requirements.

A reality, as per Chapman and Swade [2], is that over 80% of all scientific papers are rejected at least once prior to publication. Other metrics paint a more depressing picture still. In 2013, Nature published less than 8% of all submissions [3]. As such, many scientists may be inclined to submit a rejection letter to reject their rejection to starve off disappointment [2]. Of course, not all studies are novel or of sufficient scientific rigor to warrant publication. But increasingly, scientists are frustrated not only because they have been critiqued on the scientific valour of their work, but because of the time they have lost due to journal-specific, idiosyncratic formatting during the submission process. Many scientists have voiced their concerns of time lost due to formatting on several social media platforms, and via the commentary section of several journals. As argued by Guo (and Moore and Budd thereafter), there is no scientific advantage to employing different referencing formats [3,4,5]. Budd goes on to estimate that time spent re-formatting accounts for 10,000 scientist hours per year, per journal [3]. Elsevier reported that nearly one in three scientists reported “preparing manuscripts” as the work activity they found the most frustrating or time consuming [6].

Interestingly, we were unable to find any previous studies that aimed at quantifying the economic costs of authors’ time spent on formatting for scientific publications. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a survey to estimate the time and wage costs of formatting scientific manuscripts for publication in peer-reviewed journals. We hypothesized that the cost of formatting would be substantial and strategies should be put in place to mitigate this cost while preserving the essence of the scientific process.

 Materials and methods Study protocol and data collection

A self-report electronic survey containing 10 questions was sent initially through the authors’ scientific affiliations and networks via a snowball method to individuals who may be responsible for submitting scientific papers for publication in peer-reviewed journals (S1 Appendix). For the purpose of this work, formatting was defined as total time related to formatting the body of the manuscript, figures, tables, supplementary files, and references. Respondents were asked not to count time spent on statistical analysis, writing, or editing. The survey was promoted through email (e.g., personal email and organizational list serves), websites and blogs (e.g., www.haloresearch.ca, Obesity Panacea), social media (i.e., Twitter, Facebook) and word-of-mouth. The survey was live between October 2018 and January 2019. Due to the snowball methodology, it is not possible to determine a response rate, but 85% of surveys that were started, were completed. Ethics approval was obtained from the Research Ethics Board at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute. By completing the survey respondents provided their consent. The collection method complied with the terms and conditions for the websites from which participants were recruited. Data were collected and analyzed anonymously. The survey took approximately 5 minutes to complete and all information gathered was kept confidential with no personal identifiers retained.

 Study population

Participants were required to have access to the internet to complete the survey. Only participants who indicated that they had submitted at least one peer-reviewed paper in the previous year (2017) were eligible to complete the survey. The survey was only offered in English. There was no minimum or maximum age requirement to participate.

 Outcomes

The primary outcome was the time (hours) and wage cost (wage rate per hour x time) associated with formatting scientific papers. Time spent formatting was the total amount of time taken to format a manuscript for publication in a peer-reviewed academic journal. Participants were asked to include the time it took them to format the paper for initial submission, as well as any additional time required until the paper was accepted and considered ready for publication. The wage cost of formatting was calculated using annual income to estimate wage rates per hour (11 income categories, see S1 Appendix). Occupation was used to estimate annual income in cases of refusal responses; however, almost all participants (99%) disclosed their annual income. Occupation was used for descriptive statistics and subgroup analysis.

 Statistical analysis

This was the first study we could find to calculate the wage cost of formatting in scientific research. As such, our methods and analysis were exploratory. We considered any wage cost associated with formatting to be significant as this is not a cost that is typically accounted for in research funding, grant applications, job descriptions, or considerations for promotion. We summarized the continuous variables by median and median absolute deviation (to account for the over-dispersed and skewed distributions of several of the variables) and categorical variables by frequency and percentage. Participants were asked to convert their gross annual personal income to US dollars (USD) using an online currency converter (www.xe.com/currencyconverter). Several participants responded with an income value in their national currency. These responses were converted to USD using the same currency converter. For participants who did not provide an income category (selected the “Other” response item), it was estimated as the median income category for the occupation group with which they identified. To calculate the wage cost of formatting, we used an estimate of 1950 hours in a working year.

Univariate outlier detection was performed by computing robust z-scores for all count variables related to the outcome variables (number of manuscripts submitted in 2017, time spent formatting a manuscript for submission, time spent formatting a manuscript from acceptance to publication, number of journals submitted to before a manuscript was accepted, time spent re-formatting a manuscript for re-submission). Robust z-scores greater than three were flagged as outliers. An audit was then performed on these flagged values and respondents with responses deemed unreasonably high were removed from the analysis; 20 respondents in total were removed from the analysis. All analyses were completed using RStudio 1.1.463 (Boston, MA).

 Results Study population

The survey resulted in 921 page views and 458 participants completed at least one question of the survey. Complete surveys were available from 419 respondents. Twenty-seven respondents reported that they were not responsible for submitting and/or formatting manuscripts for publication in a peer-reviewed journal and were excluded from analysis. A further 20 respondents were removed as outliers with implausible responses. The final analytic sample included 372 respondents. Table 1 shows the summary demographic characteristics of these participants. The youngest participant was 22 years-old and the oldest participant was 72 years-old, suggesting that there were respondents from across the career spectrum. Participants were from 41 countries representing six continents (60% of which were from Canada), and included 16 clinicians/healthcare providers (e.g., medical doctor, nurse), 257 scientists/researchers (e.g., professor, scientist, post-doctoral fellow), 24 research assistants/managers, 66 students (e.g., undergraduate, masters, doctoral), and 9 people who responded “other”.

10.1371/journal.pone.0223116.t001 Demographic information of participants (n = 372).
Demographic variable  
Age (median, MAD) 37.0 (10.4)
Gender (n, %)
Men 165 (44.4)
Women 207 (55.6)
Country (n, %)  
Australia 15 (4.0)
Canada 224 (60.2)
Spain 13 (3.5)
United Kingdom 16 (4.3)
United States 34 (9.1)
Other 70 (18.8)
Occupation (n, %)
Clinician/health care provider 16 (4.3)
Scientist/researcher 257 (69.1)
Research assistant/managers 24 (6.5)
Student 66 (17.7)
Other 9 (2.4)
Salary (n, %)  
< $21,000 per year 37 (9.9)
$21,000–80,999 per year 182 (48.9)
$81,000–140,999 per year 101 (27.2)
$141,000–200,999 per year 26 (7.0)
> = $201,000 per year 26 (7.0)

MAD: median absolute deviation

 Outcomes

Outcome measures are presented in Table 2. Due to positive skewness in the data, all outcome measures are reported as median values. The median annual income category was US$61,000–80,999 and the median number of publications formatted in 2017 was four. Manuscripts required a median of two attempts before they were accepted for publication. Median time spent formatting was 14 hours per manuscript. Median total time for all manuscripts published in 2017 was 52 hours per person per year. This resulted in wage costs of US$477 per manuscript, or US$1,908 per person per year.

10.1371/journal.pone.0223116.t002 Outcomes related to cost of formatting for scientific publications.
Outcome (median, MAD) Per manuscript Per person, per year
Number of manuscripts responsible for submitting and/or formatting per year 4 (3.0) -
Number of submissions before publication 2 (1.5) -
Hours
Time spent on initial formatting 4 (3.0) 16 (14.8)
Time spent re-formatting for re-submission 3 (3.0) 6 (5.9)
Total time spent formatting from initial submission until publication 14 (11.1) 52 (48.9)
Cost
Wage-cost US$477 US$1908

MAD: median absolute deviation

Sensitivity analyses of outcome measures by age groups (≤37 years vs. >37 years; median split), gender (men vs. women) and occupation (scientists vs. non-scientists) are reported as Supporting Information (S1–S3 Tables). Overall, the cost of formatting a peer-reviewed scientific publication (per person, per year) was significantly higher in those over 37 years of age (US$3,669 vs. US$938), in men (US$2,015 vs. US$1,726) and among non-scientists (US$2,391 vs. US$947).

 Discussion

To our knowledge, this is the first study to analyze time and wage cost associated with formatting in scientific publishing. Our results suggest that each manuscript costs 14 hours, or US$477 to format for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. This represents a loss of 52 hours or a cost of US$1,908 per person-year. This is an important discovery as currently time for formatting is considered valueless, even in the scientific community [7]. The cost of formatting is similar to the cost of publication fees for many open access journals and suggests that researchers may need to build in this formatting time into grant application budgets, though it is possible that granting agencies may receive this funding request unfavourably.

Alternatively, it is hoped that a growing number of journals will recommend no strict formatting guidelines, at least at first submission but preferably until acceptance, to alleviate the unnecessary burden on scientists. In 2012, Elsevier initiated a process like this in the journal Free Radical Biology & Medicine with “Your Paper, Your Way”, a simplified submission process with no strict formatting requirements until the paper has been accepted for publication. Others have suggested that journals assume the role of standardizing formatting, an expense that may be justified given publication charge that many impose [8]. Another suggestion may be that journal publishers compensate authors for their time spent formatting (and/or other editorial services). Our analysis suggests the time-cost for formatting may soon be a luxury that few scientists can afford.

As with any study, this work has several strengths and limitations. On a positive note, we were able to recruit a large and diverse sample, suggesting that this is an area of importance and interest within the scientific community. We also had a high proportion of completed surveys, suggesting that participant burden was low and interest level was high. Further, we had representation from several countries around the world, and across various levels of employment, suggesting that our sample may be crudely representative of the scientific community. Among the limitations, the observational nature of the study precludes inferences about causality. We have also not asked respondents about their field of study, and it is likely that many respondents were from health sciences given our field of research and the snowball methodology used. The representation of respondents was also largely from Canada (60%). This work was also based on self-report data and cannot be verified. It is possible that some scientists may over-estimate the time they spend formatting; however, we did try to address this issue during analysis by removing implausible outliers and median values were used for analysis. This survey was also based on a convenience sample and respondent bias is likely. We did not ask participants about their training in copy-editing, referencing software, or graphic design. It is possible that proficiency with word processing software may impact amount of time required to format. Future work may address these shortcomings.

In summary, we estimate the cost of formatting a peer-reviewed scientific publication at US$477 per manuscript, or US$1,908 per person, per year. We hope that this quantification, although suggestive and not definitively conclusive, will bring more attention to the costs associated with formatting for scientific journals and will help to encourage more flexible formatting practices for publications, at least at first submission, as well as more recognition of the burden of formatting by employers and funding agencies.

 Supporting information Survey questions.

(DOCX)

 Outcomes related to cost of formatting for scientific publications, by age group.

(DOCX)

 Outcomes related to cost of formatting for scientific publications, by gender.

(DOCX)

 Outcomes related to cost of formatting for scientific publications, by occupation.

(DOCX)

We thank the participants for completing this survey.

 References Swoger B. The (mostly true) origins of the scientific journal. Scientific America. July 27, 2012. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/information-culture/the-mostly-true-origins-of-the-scientific-journal/?redirect=1 (Accessed May 23, 2019). Chapman C, Swade T. Rejection of a rejection: a novel approach to overcoming barriers to publication. BMJ. 2015; 351:h6326. doi: 10.1136/bmj.h6326 26666424 Budd J. Reformatting wastes public funds. Nature. 2017; 543:40. Guo Q. Journals, agree on manuscript format. Nature. 2016; 540: 525. Moore JP. Journals, do your own formatting. Nature. 2017; 542: 31. Elsevier. Your paper, Your way. Elsevier. https://www.elsevier.com/authors/journal-authors/your-paper-your-way (Accessed May 30, 2019). Khan A, Montenegro-Montero A, Mathelier A. Put science first and formatting later. EMBO Rep. 2018;19(5). Richard A. Academic publishing: time wasted in formatting and resubmission. Stranded. September 11, 2017. https://www.arunrichard.com/blog//academic-publishing-time-wasted-in-formatting-and-resubmission (Accessed February 27, 2019). 10.1371/journal.pone.0223116.r001 Decision Letter 0 Abbasi Alireza Academic Editor 2019 Alireza Abbasi This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Submission Version 0

30 Aug 2019

[EXSCINDED]

PONE-D-19-20185

Scientific sinkhole: The pernicious price of formatting

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Chaput,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Oct 14 2019 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter.

To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that if applicable you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). This letter should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.

A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.

An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Manuscript'.

Please note while forming your response, if your article is accepted, you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Alireza Abbasi

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

2. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Please make sure the limitations of observational studies have been acknowledged, including in the abstract, and provide supports for statements of causation, where applicable.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: When preparing a manuscript to a journal for publication, it is the fundamental responsibility of the authors to make sure that the written texts are composed to a high standard and free from grammar mistakes. Formatting the manuscript according to the requirement of a particular journal, however, adds little value to the manuscript. A journal has the freedom to define its own image and style, but should not really request the authors to stick to a specific format when submitting an article for review. As Allana G LeBlanc et al have found from their research, scientists spent a significant amount of time each year doing journal specific formatting of their manuscripts. This is transformed directly into extra cost in research. According to the study of Allana G LeBlanc et al, it costs around $1900 per researcher per year performing manuscript formatting. To say that this is the amount of money wasted might sounds a bit harsh, but this certainly could be the money saved for more important things. The study of Allana G LeBlanc et al is well conducted and their finding is reasonably representative.

Reviewer #2: This is a study about an important issue in scholarly communication. It is about the time scholars spend on formatting manuscripts for publications in journals. In spite of its cost implications, the issue hasn’t received enough attention from journals, publishers or researchers who study scholarly communication.

The study has used a short and relatively effective questionnaire survey to ask scientists about the time they spend on the task and their salary. The statistics is ok and median and median absolute deviation that are safe measures in this case have been used and outliers have been removed.

The findings, although suggestive, and not conclusive (this, I believe, should be stated by the authors) can raise the awareness among journals and stimulate more discussion and action.

The authors might be interested in the following piece in relation to the same issue.

Khan, A., Montenegro‐Montero, A., & Mathelier, A. (2018). Put science first and formatting later. EMBO reports, 19(5).

A few issues that I noticed are as below:

• My major problem with the results is that it lacks context. The authors haven’t asked the respondents about their field of study (even broadly like social science, natural science etc.) so we really don’t know what this data represent. The sampling has been snowball mainly and self-selective through website pop-up etc. Given that the authors are from health sciences there is chance that most respondents are from health sciences too and again this should be mentioned.

•

• The respondents, although said to be from 41 countries, are mostly (the majority) from Canada. Even the number from USA, given the number of scientists it has is very low. This should be mentioned in limitation and statements about country of participants should be toned down in abstract etc.

• Another statement that I think needs mending is that in a few places the author mention the survey was available for a short period of time. Surveys are usually open for 10 days or a month or so. This has been open for about 4 months and that is not really a short period of time in survey studies.

• I personally, based on my personal experience, think 14 hours for formatting each paper might be a bit over-estimation, but I am from social science and maybe respondents coming from different fields have different experience.

• In Table 1, the column header for the second column should be (n, %).

• I think providing more analysis can result in more insight. Giving median and MAD for hours spent on formatting by gender, occupation, age group and checking if there are significant differences can provide more context for the data. Also the number of papers each group have said they format a year could be very different.

On a side note, author contribution section has a long story about how the paper was developed with disagreement about formatting, which is unusual because that is not a matter of personal preference and people usually decide on the basis of the journal they want to submit to.

**********

6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: Yes: Quanmin Guo

Reviewer #2: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files to be viewed.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email us at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

 10.1371/journal.pone.0223116.r002 Author response to Decision Letter 0 Submission Version 1

5 Sep 2019

RESPONSE TO REVIEWERS’ COMMENTS

General note: Modifications that have been made to the article as a result of the reviewers’ comments have been highlighted to facilitate their identification.

Comments to the Authors:

Editor Comments:

Please make sure the limitations of observational studies have been acknowledged and provide supports for statements of causation, where applicable.

Response: The limitations of observational studies have been added to the paper and we modified the language to avoid causation statements.

Reviewer #1:

When preparing a manuscript to a journal for publication, it is the fundamental responsibility of the authors to make sure that the written texts are composed to a high standard and free from grammar mistakes. Formatting the manuscript according to the requirement of a particular journal, however, adds little value to the manuscript. A journal has the freedom to define its own image and style, but should not really request the authors to stick to a specific format when submitting an article for review. As Allana G LeBlanc et al have found from their research, scientists spent a significant amount of time each year doing journal specific formatting of their manuscripts. This is transformed directly into extra cost in research. According to the study of Allana G LeBlanc et al, it costs around $1900 per researcher per year performing manuscript formatting. To say that this is the amount of money wasted might sounds a bit harsh, but this certainly could be the money saved for more important things. The study of Allana G LeBlanc et al is well conducted and their finding is reasonably representative.

Response: We thank the reviewer for this positive feedback.

Reviewer #2:

This is a study about an important issue in scholarly communication. It is about the time scholars spend on formatting manuscripts for publications in journals. In spite of its cost implications, the issue hasn’t received enough attention from journals, publishers or researchers who study scholarly communication. The study has used a short and relatively effective questionnaire survey to ask scientists about the time they spend on the task and their salary. The statistics is ok and median and median absolute deviation that are safe measures in this case have been used and outliers have been removed. The findings, although suggestive, and not conclusive (this, I believe, should be stated by the authors) can raise the awareness among journals and stimulate more discussion and action.

Response: We thank the reviewer for this feedback. We have added the suggestion about “suggestive and not conclusive” to the manuscript.

The authors might be interested in the following piece in relation to the same issue.

Khan, A., Montenegro‐Montero, A., & Mathelier, A. (2018). Put science first and formatting later. EMBO reports, 19(5).

Response: We thank the reviewer for this. We have added this paper to our manuscript.

A few issues that I noticed are as below:

• My major problem with the results is that it lacks context. The authors haven’t asked the respondents about their field of study (even broadly like social science, natural science etc.) so we really don’t know what this data represent. The sampling has been snowball mainly and self-selective through website pop-up etc. Given that the authors are from health sciences there is chance that most respondents are from health sciences too and again this should be mentioned.

Response: We agree with the reviewer. This has been added to the manuscript.

• The respondents, although said to be from 41 countries, are mostly (the majority) from Canada. Even the number from USA, given the number of scientists it has is very low. This should be mentioned in limitation and statements about country of participants should be toned down in abstract etc.

Response: We agree with the reviewer. We have added this point in the limitations and mentioned in the abstract that 60% of respondents were from Canada.

• Another statement that I think needs mending is that in a few places the authors mention the survey was available for a short period of time. Surveys are usually open for 10 days or a month or so. This has been open for about 4 months and that is not really a short period of time in survey studies.

Response: This has been removed from the manuscript.

• I personally, based on my personal experience, think 14 hours for formatting each paper might be a bit over-estimation, but I am from social science and maybe respondents coming from different fields have different experience.

Response: It is difficult to know. These are the data we have and it includes time spent formatting and re-formatting until publication. This is in line with my experience but I agree that it may be field dependent.

• In Table 1, the column header for the second column should be (n, %).

Response: We decided not to put a unit in the header and instead put it after each variable. For example, age has a different unit (median, MAD) than the other variables (n, %).

• I think providing more analysis can result in more insight. Giving median and MAD for hours spent on formatting by gender, occupation, age group and checking if there are significant differences can provide more context for the data. Also the number of papers each group have said they format a year could be very different.

Response: We thank the reviewer for this suggestion. Sensitivity analyses by gender, age group and occupation have been added to the manuscript.

On a side note, author contribution section has a long story about how the paper was developed with disagreement about formatting, which is unusual because that is not a matter of personal preference and people usually decide on the basis of the journal they want to submit to.

Response: We agree with the reviewer. We have shortened this paragraph as requested.

Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.doc

 10.1371/journal.pone.0223116.r003 Decision Letter 1 Abbasi Alireza Academic Editor 2019 Alireza Abbasi This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Submission Version 1

16 Sep 2019

Scientific sinkhole: The pernicious price of formatting

PONE-D-19-20185R1

Dear Dr. Chaput,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you will receive an e-mail containing information on the amendments required prior to publication. When all required modifications have been addressed, you will receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will proceed to our production department and be scheduled for publication.

Shortly after the formal acceptance letter is sent, an invoice for payment will follow. To ensure an efficient production and billing process, please log into Editorial Manager at https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the "Update My Information" link at the top of the page, and update your user information. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, you must inform our press team as soon as possible and no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

With kind regards,

Alireza Abbasi

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: The revised manuscript is sufficient for publication. The research has some limitations that I mentioned before but they have been mentioned in the manuscript now. The research is overall interesting and useful.

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #2: Yes: Hamid R. Jamali

 10.1371/journal.pone.0223116.r004 Acceptance letter Abbasi Alireza Academic Editor 2019 Alireza Abbasi This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

20 Sep 2019

PONE-D-19-20185R1

Scientific sinkhole: The pernicious price of formatting

Dear Dr. Chaput:

I am pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper at this point, to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org.

For any other questions or concerns, please email plosone@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE.

With kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Alireza Abbasi

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE