Stop Formatting Before the Desk Reject: A Proposal for Staged Submissions

Many flagship journals reject most manuscripts at the desk-review stage, with rates of 40–80% being common (e.g., Dolan et al., 2024; Jiang et al., 2019; Tripp & Dion, 2024). As submission volume increases (Thelwall & Sud, 2022), including an apparent rise in low-quality contributions facilitated by large language models (Corker, 2025), early rejections are likely to become even more frequent. This is understandable: editors process many submissions, reviewers are scarce, and early decisions keep the system functioning. Yet, high desk-rejection rates create a rarely acknowledged structural problem: authors must comply with extensive submission requirements - cover letters, collaborator lists, funding statements, questionnaires, formatting templates, and citation rules - before editors decide whether a manuscript is worth sending out for review. Preparing these materials can take hours or even days (Jiang et al., 2019). The work has no value for authors who receive a desk-rejection, and it is unclear how many of these requirements inform editorial decisions. Moreover, they are often idiosyncratic, making them largely useless for future submissions. Early-career researchers who often submit collaborative work and scholars with heavier teaching loads are especially affected, as fine-tuning submissions comes at the expense of already scarce time for research or teaching. The result is an inefficient and inequitable system. A more efficient system in which authors provide only information needed at each stage of evaluation is possible. That is what we propose in this blog.

While others have discussed the burden of formatting requirements and the need to streamline submission processes (e.g., Budd, 2017; Jiang et al., 2019; Zon et al., 2021), we believe that rising submission volumes, partly driven by the use of large language models, underline the need to reform publishing systems. Our point also concerns a different part of the process: journals often request information at first submission that is unnecessary for the initial decision. A more effective approach would be to sequence these requirements, requesting additional details only as the manuscript progresses. This aligns with fundamental principles of good scientific practice: reducing unnecessary burdens, improving transparency, and ensuring that administrative requirements serve a clear purpose.

The first stage should be a minimal submission. At this point, editors need to determine whether a manuscript should be sent out for review. They typically need author information, the title and abstract, the manuscript as a PDF file in any reasonable typesetting format meeting basic requirements such as word counts, and a concise statement or checklist covering ethics, conflicts of interest in research (Ahn et al., 2017; Ebrahim et al., 2016), and supporting information related to open-science practices (Aczel et al., 2020). Editors do not - and should not - base decisions on recent collaborators, funding sources (aside from clear conflicts of interest), conference presentations, or formatting details. Cover letters should not be required either, as they commonly add no information beyond the manuscript, and their role in editorial decisions is unclear. With minimal information, editors can focus on the scientific contribution before making the key decision: desk reject or peer review.

If editors decide that a manuscript merits external review, the process should move to a second stage. Authors may then be asked to provide information needed for reviewer selection: suggested or opposed reviewers and individuals who should be excluded due to close collaboration or involvement with the work. Authors can supply this within a reasonable time window. The manuscript then returns to the editor, who can use this information to assemble reviewers. Crucially, this information becomes relevant only after the decision to send the manuscript out for review. This prevents authors from spending time preparing materials for manuscripts that will never reach reviewers and avoids requiring editors to evaluate information that is irrelevant at first submission.

A third stage occurs only after a manuscript receives conditional acceptance. At this point, authors can be asked to format their manuscripts according to journal style and citation requirements, provide figures in specific formats, and include more details on funding sources and acknowledgments. These tasks are appropriate once publication is within reach, and only a small fraction of authors should be asked to complete them. While not all complex formatting requirements should be outsourced to authors, asking the small number who progress through peer review to meet formatting standards is reasonable and aligns administrative efforts with expected benefits.

We believe that the advantages of this staged approach outweigh potential disadvantages. As more journals have increasingly high desk-rejection rates, authors will no longer need to spend hours preparing submissions to meet requirements irrelevant to the first editorial decision. Editors, in turn, avoid reviewing unnecessary information that does not help them assess scientific merit. Some may worry that simplifying initial requirements could invite more low-quality or spam submissions; yet with LLMs lowering the effort required to generate and submit such manuscripts, existing hurdles are unlikely to deter these attempts, and new filtering processes would be required in any case. It would also be valuable to consult handling editors, such as the first author of this commentary, when designing concrete changes. This blog post is not intended as a definitive solution to rising submission and desk rejection rates, but as a call to begin a serious discussion about structural changes that the publication system can no longer postpone.

Our proposed reform requires only modest adjustments. It does not introduce new obligations; it simply moves existing ones to the stages where they matter. A staged submission model would make the publication process more efficient and focus editorial attention on what matters most: the science itself.

This project has received funding from the European Union, under the Horizon Europe MSCA Doctoral Networks programme (Call HORIZONMSCA-2021-DN-01, Grant Agreement No. 101072992) with participation from the UKRI Horizon Europe guarantee’ scheme.

References

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