A universal manuscript submission page is the need of the hour to save precious time for researchers that can be spent in doing actual research instead.
As a researcher, one's first priority is to do science without having to worry about the next grant deadline or having enough publications to keep them afloat in the academic system. These two desk work items (as opposed to the bench work many scientists love to do) are tied in to one another, with publications serving as a currency or track record for grant applications. In this 'publish or perish' scenario, it might seem a simple process to do research and publish, but there is a limbo phase in scientific communication that takes away precious time from researchers. This is the time when new scientific results are written up for publication and submitted to a journal. Some of the thoughts that go into this process are which journal to submit to, what kind of a manuscript category does the paper fit into and the publication time involved in the chosen journal. According to a news feature in Nature, while the average time between acceptance and publication has dropped in recent times, the time taken for review and eventual acceptance (or rejection) is still frustratingly long. These metrics show the wait times that are part of the publication process, but what it does not show is the time spent behind the scenes when scientists "window shop" for journals before the paper eventually gets accepted and published in one.
Manuscript formatting
Academic researchers are probably used (and adapted) to the process of rejection from a journal and resubmission to another. But it is not a streamlined process and researchers lose time in such a phase. Every journal has its own style and formatting (striving to stand out in a competitive publishing business) and in most cases, recommend submitting the manuscript already formatted according to the journal's requirements. But content is more important that style. As Quanmin Guo says in his correspondence to Nature, “Cosmetic treatments should instead be reserved for enhancing the clarity of a manuscript's content.”
Time spent on formatting their manuscripts is time lost on doing research or writing grants. If a paper is rejected from a journal and is submitted to another, that's another few hours to format it again! There is no advantage to spending time formatting an article without knowing if it will be accepted for publication in that journal. If rejected, authors have to format the manuscript again to make it suitable for a different journal. In this era of online publishing, it is high time that journals work together to agree on a particular format (or format free) submission prior to acceptance and save time for authors. Authors could possibly format the manuscript according to journal requirements after acceptance. This does not burden the publisher, while saving a lot of time during submission (and resubmission) for the authors. Publishing giant Elsevier has taken a right step in this direction, introducing “Your paper, your way”, so that “authors can focus on what really matters: the science”. Authors can simply submit a PDF version of their manuscript without any formatting requirements. A free-form submission does not in any way impact the current publishing process, as long as a manuscript is written well for editors and reviewers to comprehend. Desktop publishing work like formatting and styling manuscripts should be taken over by publishers, especially those which charge authors (publication charges, figure charges, or open access charges).
Manuscript submission page
In today's academic world, for a paper to be accepted in its first submission has become a rarity. Authors whose papers are rejected lose more time in resubmission of the paper to other journals, especially when it requires reformatting to suit the second journal, making this a frustrating process. Submission process even between journals belonging to the same publisher is not streamlined as they treat each journal as an independent entity. It takes quite a while to enter author names and emails, abstract, title, funding, reviewer suggestions, and so on for every submission. Some journals provide a manuscript transfer service for the convenience of authors: If a paper is rejected, the journal suggests an alternative in the same publishing family so that authors can transfer all pertinent information and save time. However, this is not a default option, and if editors do not recommend another journal, authors cannot use manuscript transfer service unless the option is provided in the decision letter. Moreover, in most cases, the journals provide a transfer to one of their new journals or a new open access journal they have started. This only helps the publisher promote their new journals rather than helping the author. Journals should attempt to create a submission page where authors can easily submit to different journals of the publisher with the click of the button.
A universal manuscript submission platform where authors can upload a file and choose which journal they wish to submit to, without having to enter the information over and over again in multiple websites for different journal resubmissions.
The ideal solution to all these publishing woes is to create a single webpage for manuscript submissions to all journals. This might take some time to become a practical solution, but it is definitely a possibility, at least within the same publishing family. While a drop down menu of journals now exist, authors cannot choose another journal in the same family and use the same information he or she entered in the prior submission. Journals belonging to the same publisher use the same website, but yet do not allow information transfer between journals even if they specifically ask “has this manuscript been previously considered by any journal in this family”. The publication arena has seen many changes in recent years, and hopefully it will change for the better, and help authors spend less time on menial formatting and meta data input.