Good science, bad font: Solving the problems of getting published

Lynch replies: I was struck by David Couzens’s thoughtful comments on the inherent stumbling blocks of change. When he asks “Does electronic publishing save money?” he goes on to recognize that “Time is money.” But whose time and whose money? A scientist can choose to labor over a paper as long as he likes to get it right, using whatever tools he chooses. But then he is slapped in the face and told that his pains are all for naught unless he spends a lot of time—money—conforming to the publisher’s scientifically irrelevant submission requirements. “Sorry, your scientific best isn’t good enough because your font is wrong.”

Has physics unknowingly suffered because the author of a worthy paper didn’t have the time or financial resources to meet the publisher’s self-enforced, self-serving formatting and submission requirements?

I recently self-published a book. In the past I would have gone to a major scientific publisher. But if I am going to be forced to meet the publisher’s onerous formatting and style requirements, I might as well self-publish and do it my way. My hero in this regard is Lawrence N. Mertz (1930–2002), who bypassed the journal requirements by publishing summaries of his scientific work as paid advertisements in the Journal of the Optical Society of America.