Scientific Publishing and Microsoft Word 2007
Posted by mfenner, Mon Jul 09 22:27:00 UTC 2007
Two important scientific journals recently stated that they cannot accept manuscripts written with Microsoft Word 2007, the .docx format: Nature and Science. The .doc format of previous versions of Microsoft Word hasn’t changed for close to 10 years and has become the standard for manuscripts submitted to STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) journals.
The reasons behind this move by Science, Nature and other journals are explained in a post on Nature’s Nascent Blog. Basically, journals have over the years developed workflows around the .doc format. Documents written with Microsoft Word 2007 are not compatible with these workflows in two important areas: equations and special characters.
What does this mean for scientific publishing? There are probably two answers. (1) We are at the beginning of a transition period to the new Microsoft Word format. It will take some time (probably years) until not only the publishing workflows of the journals but also the majority of scientists have moved to the .docx format. (2) This situation creates a window of opportunity for new document formats that might either coexist with .docx or even become a new standard. What are the contenders?
- Publicon Launched by Wolfram Research two years ago, it hasn’t seen a product update since (it’s still at version 1.0.1). A good idea, but most likely a dead product.
- OpenOffice and the OpenDocument format The other Office software. ODF has been adopted by the US state Massachusetts as standard document format. It is important to remember that ODF is supported not only by OpenOffice but also other software such as KOffice.
- Web-based tools such as Google Docs or Zoho Writer Web 2.0 technology now allows fairly sophisticated word processors within your web browser. Not quite as comfortable as your stand-alone word processor, but with one killer feature: collaboration. Almost all scientific publications are written by many authors, sometimes thousands of miles apart. One of the most important aspects of writing a scientific publication is the integration of references, which again are almost all found online. And the publishing workflow (peer review, printing, online publishing) would be much easier with web-based documents.
The most likely scenario is the gradual transition to Microsoft Word 2007. But the best scenario for STM publishers is clearly the last one, simply because it is the cheapest. Price is important for everyone, but expecially so for Open Access publishers that typically charge the author and not the reader. Let’s hope that someone builds the infrastructure for this. Google would be a likely contender as they already have both Google Docs and Google Scholar already in place. Or a publisher such as Public Library of Science picks up the ball.
