Submission Process

Simplifying the Direct Submission process.

Although the largest number of submissions to PNAS are through the Direct Submission route, there continues to linger a general perception that to publish a paper in PNAS, an author requires sponsorship of an NAS member. In July 2010, the member Communicated route was eliminated, but to ensure and promote submission of exceptional papers that either were interdisciplinary and hence needed speci...

Title TBA: Revising the Abstract Submission Process

Academic conferences are among the most prolific scientific activities, yet the current abstract submission and review process has serious limitations. We propose a revised process that would address these limitations, achieve some of the aims of Open Science, and stimulate discussion throughout the entire lifecycle of the scientific work.

Where Should I Send It? Optimizing the Submission Decision Process

How do scientists decide where to submit manuscripts? Many factors influence this decision, including prestige, acceptance probability, turnaround time, target audience, fit, and impact factor. Here, we present a framework for evaluating where to submit a manuscript based on the theory of Markov decision processes. We derive two models, one in which an author is trying to optimally maximize cit...

A two-step manuscript submission process can reduce publication bias.

Much of what is researched is never published. This would not be of great concern if the selection of what we read would occur irrespective of study outcomes. Unfortunately, the reverse is the case: "positive" studies have a much larger chance of acceptance after editorial and peer review than "negative" ones. Several solutions to this problem of publication bias have been discussed or implemen...

Multiple submission, duplicate submission and duplicate publication.