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Original poster

Is it annoying and unprofessional to try and get away with a cheeky wordcount?

11 replies

ooglyboo · 25/03/2019 15:45

I think I know the answer ... but I am about to submit a paper to a journal with an 8,000 word limit. I have just about got there but while double-checking the submission guidelines saw that the word count includes figures. I have stuck a lot of (illustrative) data in a figure!! Is it just annoying for me to submit it to see if I can get away with it? I am sure I have submitted to this journal before and they didn't count the figures. It's qualitative data heavy and I just don't see how I can take out another 500/700 words. Grrrrr.

OP posts:

TheOrigFV45 · 25/03/2019 16:08

I think I'd write to the Eds before submitting and ask if they'll accept it.
They might let you off, which will save you faffing around.

PhDone · 09/05/2019 16:52

I did this with a scholarship application once (embedded the figure captions) but you never know how strict they'll be...

SpoonBlender · 09/05/2019 18:24

Definitely ask - this isn't secondary school, sneaking something past the teacher! It's fairly likely that tables of data will not count towards wordcount.

ladybirdees · 09/05/2019 18:30

I was an editor of an academic journal. The editors will easily be able to edit 700 words out for you presuming it's going to go through peer review and subsequent editing anyway. I would send as is. I only used to return things that were way over submission guidelines, and figures were always separate anyhoo...although I was wise to those cramming text into figures but you could always have a text box or similar so long as it's stand alone material. Submit and ask for advice basically!

ladybirdees · 09/05/2019 18:32

In fact I'd go as far as to say i would have been delighted that a potential author had taken such great care to only be 500-700 words over what was asked!

murmuration · 20/05/2019 17:03

Is it figure legends? As I don't see how figures can be counted elsewise. I imagine it won't make a difference at initial review unless its a really big journal - going by the obvious disregard of journal requirements in many papers I've been asked to review! I think many people just don't READ them. But I also seriously doubt anyone would help you cut (was it a really big journal, lady? Or, alternately, a really small one? most I submit to wouldn't help you with the actual text in any way). I had a massive back-and-forth with some gatekeeper somewhere at the acceptance stage because of paper-size differences and she was printing my stuff out on US paper and it automatically shrunk which meant my font size was too small over there... Took ages for me to figure out what was going on there. Definitely no suggestions that anyone would help me make it shorter!

Up to you - could be a risk. If you hadn't double checked you wouldn't know. Is there any risk that they'd actually reject instead of coming back and saying "hey, we can't take this its too long, please make is shorter?"

ladybirdees · 20/05/2019 18:09

It was the leading science journal and others within that family. All manuscripts were edited and I agree you might not get that on most journals but if OP is talking about a peer reviewed journal most articles will have revisions to do after peer review and word count could be addressed at that stage. That's what I'd often do. If the article was 500 word limit and you'd sent an extra 500 that would obviously be a no go but in this case I wouldn't have bothered sending back an article of 8,000 words if it was just 500 over.

ladybirdees · 20/05/2019 18:11

Also you could always send an email to the journal contact and just ask them?

Leelawadee · 20/05/2019 18:12

What they said. On the other hand, I once had someone send me a 13000 word essay for a journal special issue when the upper word count given was 7000. That bounced back to her faster than a pingpong ball.

murmuration · 20/05/2019 18:18

lady, ah, I hear they give more support :) If I'll ever know first hand is another question...

And if its word count, they probably won't check on first submission. I usually submit places with page limits which are a little more obvious when you go over.

MedSchoolRat · 21/05/2019 18:43

I know we all speak to our own experience, this boggled my mind, though:

The editors will easily be able to edit 700 words out for you presuming it's going to go through peer review and subsequent editing anyway.

No way would that ever happen, any journal I ever submitted to. I expect a straight reject if they enforce the word count rules at all. Once (after I paid open access fees) I got an editor to alter the funder statement that had been omitted from accepted (fully anonymised) manuscript available as pdf on their server. They never edited anything else... often typesetters correct errant references, I suppose.

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