Requirements for formal acceptance

Once your manuscript has successfully negotiated peer review and an offer of publication has been made, you may be asked to submit additional files and complete some other formalities before your article can be formally accepted. These requirements and their timing will vary from journal to journal. Here we describe the most common requests to help guide you through the final stages of acceptance.

Final changes

Your editor may ask you to make some final changes to the manuscript, for example to address:

  • Minor comments from the final round of peer review
  • Incorrect ordering of sections within the manuscript
  • Incorrect formatting of citations and references
  • Figure labeling that lacks clarity
  • Article length for some journals
  • Language deficiencies so the community can fully understand your research

“Check the editor’s instructions carefully to avoid delays”

File formats

You may be asked to submit manuscript files in specific formats

  • Text files are often requested in Word or LaTeX (LaTeX templates are available for some journals here)
  • High resolution figure files are commonly requested in the following formats:
    • EPS
    • PS
    • TIFF
    • JPEG
    • PDF
  • Additional file formats may be published as supplementary materials:
    • Audio
    • Video
    • Data
    • Code

Publishing agreements

The publisher will require a signed publishing agreement in order to reproduce and distribute original work created by authors

  • Reproduction and distribution of original work is governed by the copyright holder
  • Some publishers require that copyright be transferred to them via a agreement
  • Other publishers allow authors to retain copyright while granting the publisher an exclusive license to publish
  • License to publish agreements vary from publisher to publisher, often in the restrictions they place on authors’ reuse and redistribution of the article
  • Many publishers now offer non-exclusive license to publish agreements that incorporate provision for ‘open access’ – free access to the public upon publication
  • Open access agreements include one of several Creative Commons licenses, which differ in their restrictions on adaptation, distribution and commercial reuse of the article
  • The choice of publishing agreement often depends on the funding body’s open access mandate and author preference for allowing redistribution and reuse of the work.

Publishing fees

Publishers need to recover the cost of peer reviewing, producing, hosting, archiving, promoting and sometimes printing content. These costs can be recouped in one or a combination of the following ways:

  • At some subscription-based journals, subscribers bear the full cost of publishing
  • Submission fees may be charged by both subscription-based and open access journals at the point of first submission
  • Article processing charges (APCs) are commonly applied at acceptance for open access journals and some subscription-based journals
  • Journals with a print edition may apply an additional charge per page and per color figure
  • Publishing fees may be waived in cases of financial hardship