This plea is directed at all involved in publishing micrographs. Perhaps it applies more widely, but my experience is with micrographs. I have authored a good many papers, several books, and edited a journal for 25 years. With several recent papers I have had to plead with the journal at proof stage to restore the plates to the size they were planned and supplied. To their credit, they have agreed, but it is clear from looking at other papers in the same journals that many authors have not been so vocal, and in some of the resulting plates the details being presented as evidence are no longer visible; in other words, the figure has been rendered useless. I believe there is a widespread problem here that needs correcting, and I appeal to all authors and editors to insist that journal publishers prevent their layout people from shrinking plates.
Instructions to authors are written by the editors, and they require authors to size and trim images to be as economical of space as possible. We understand that journal pages are expensive. We are directed to then group figures into plates to fit specific widths – one or two columns in the journal. It is the responsibility of the editors and reviewers to point out if our images are too big (or too small) and to raise the issue during the review process. Once the paper is accepted, the plates should not be changed. In particular, they should not be shrunk at the publisher by people who have no idea of the content of the images, i.e., those doing layout. It is ABSOLUTELY not their prerogative to do this.
I have been told by more than one editor that he loses control of the articles once they go to these big publishing houses. At least in some cases, editors do not see the proofs, which amazes me, and apparently the only correspondence about the proofs is between the publisher and the corresponding author.
I appeal to all of you who publish such images, as authors or editors—and particularly if you are in charge of publishing journals at companies such as Wiley, Cambridge, Taylor & Frances, etc., etc.—to end this practice at once so that our careful work is not put at risk in the final stage of bringing it to the scientific community. If they shrink your images, insist they restore them. Hopefully the journal editors will get the message so authors won’t have to do this article by article.
Dear Chris:
It has happened what you describe to us, and we have been able to return the plates to the size that we made (in full accordance with the instructions of the author) by asking the solution to the editor.
But I think it's very good to call attention to this issue, considering the lost in plate details may render the arguments exhibited in the manuscript are not evident.
Kind regards.
Eugenia
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