Your Paper, Your Way!

Guidance Provided to Authors on Citing and Formatting References in Nursing Journals

“…Another solution to the problem of reference accuracy is not to put the full burden on the author. In 2011, the international publisher, Elsevier, began a trial of “Your Paper Your Way” (YPYW; Davies, 2012 ), wherein authors can format their paper in any way they wish. A specific style manual for reference citations is not recommended, but whatever format the author opts to use, citations and references must be consistent and accurate.…”

The delights, discomforts, and downright furies of the manuscript submission process

“…Most major journals in any discipline now use online editorial managers (Morris, Barnas, LaFrenier, & Reich, 2013;Ware & Mabe, 2015, pp. 50-51), such as: Davies, 2011), which is discussed further in this paper.…”

“…Davies (, ); Fennell and Barrie (), and Landers () provide various accounts of how YPYW works for different Elsevier science journals. The YPYW approach has been adopted by other journals like eLife that provides a detailed account of the rationale for it and instructions for submitting articles to it (https://submit.elifesciences.org/html/elife_author_instructions.html).…”

“…If we do accept your paper we will, of course, ask you to format your work to fit the Free Radical Biology & Medicine style, but we suspect you won't mind at that point. (Davies, 2011, p. 247) Davies (2011Davies ( , 2012; Fennell and Barrie (2014), and Landers (2016) provide various accounts of how YPYW works for different Elsevier science journals. The YPYW approach has been adopted by other journals like eLife that provides a detailed account of the rationale for it and instructions for submitting articles to it (https://submit.elifesciences.org/html/elife_author_ instructions.html).…”

Simplify manuscript submission and optimize authors’ resources by eliminating formatting and cover letters

“…8 In defense of journals and publishers, it is certainly reasonable to expect authors of papers whose manuscript has been accepted for publication to format to the style required for the journal, as specified in the instructions. 9,10 In addition to author biographies and photos, other non-essential, nonacademic formatting-related requirements should also be eliminated to save time and resources and to focus entirely on the scholarly content of the paper: 11 1. abstracts that are free of any structure 2. sections that are free of any order 3. references that are free of any style 4. figures, tables, and files that are free of any format. The requirement for visual abstracts, 12 which can take time and considerable energy and even costs to develop, should also be suspended from the initial submission, but only be required, as for all other stylistic requirements, once a paper has been accepted for publication.…”