6 ms·

Perhaps this is true in the field discussed in the essay, but in my field (a natural science) formatting is taken care of with latex stylesheets, so the effort

Perhaps this is true in the field discussed in the essay, but in my field (a natural science) formatting is taken care of with latex stylesheets, so the effort of switching to another journal format usually amounts to changing a few lines. Of course there can be small details such as whether a given journal wants keywords, but dealing with such things doesn't take much time. The problem of switching to another journal is also overplayed in the essay, at least in my field. I don't know of many people who "shop" for journals to accept their work. Usually you know the right journal, and if the paper is rejected you just give up on it. Perhaps this is discipline-specific, though. (The essay is restricted to biomedical fields.) As a reviewer, I've never spent any time on journal rules. If the paper gets accepted, it's up to the technical editor to impose rules. Most authors employ the proper latex stylesheets from the first rough draft. They also use section headings that fit the journal's conventions, and so forth. I suppose it is possible that people in biomedical fields (are there any here on HN?) tend to submit to multiple journals before their work is accepted. But I sort of doubt that reviewers reject papers based on things like italics or citation formatting, so if folks are submitting to a lot of journals, maybe their work just isn't highly regarded by their peers. Basically there is no issue here, at least in my field. It's an unconvincing essay, and not one that encouraged me to waste time looking up the original work.

physPop 3y ago
It’s a huge issue in most fields. No one uses latex anymore outside of niches like math and physics.
- pbasista 3y ago
  > No one uses latex anymore That is a very broad statement. Do you have any data to back it up? Do you suggest that it was used in the past but that has changed? If so, why?
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  Well, we should go back to that, or something that is easier.
  - sebzim4500 3y ago
    I've been shilling https://typst.app/ https://typst.app/ to anyone who will listen (and some who won't), it's great. There are still missing features compared to latex, but what exists seems so much more intuitive.
    - abdullahkhalids 3y ago
      [deleted]
      - Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
        It seems to be on github with an Apache license (https://github.com/typst/typst https://github.com/typst/typst). Is there a catch I'm not seeing?
        sebzim4500 3y ago
        He's probably upset that the online editor is closed source. Personally I think that's a reasonable monetization strategy long term.
        Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
        In Latex, the online editor i know (Overleaf) is also closed source.
    - stevejpurves 3y ago
      The fast pdf generation is great but I lament on their choice of markup language, why create yet another? I'm a fan of writing content in markdown and there is at least on markdown flavour (MyST markdown) that gives the essential writing features needed for papers. (citations, cross references, figures, tables)
    - PartiallyTyped 3y ago
      I can see why! Many thanks fren, this will likely make my life easier. Much appreciated!
- noslenwerdna 3y ago
  Wait, math and physics are niche?
  - tut-urut-utut 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - dang 3y ago
      Your account has continued to post unsubstantive and flamebait comments to HN, a lot of them, after we asked you to stop. We're going to have to ban you if you keep doing this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dev_tty01 3y ago
  >No one uses latex anymore Not true. IEEE, one of the largest professional orgs, accepts Latex. So does ACM, a huge comp sci org. I'm not familiar with others, but wouldn't be surprised if many others still accept Latex.
  - jvanderbot 3y ago
    Aiaa, aaai, many others follow as well. Its ubiquitous.
  - eldaisfish 3y ago
    How many IEEE papers are submitted using the latex template? I wonder, because word-style formatting can be spotted in several of their papers. Latex is a giant pain to use - and i say this as someone who still uses it to write scientific articles. Services like overleaf exist but that is sometimes not an option with proprietary work.
  - eddieh 3y ago
    Depends on the specific publication/conference within the org. ACM accepts LaTeX or Word. I always write in LaTeX, but got a paper accepted to an ACM conference that wanted Word and my beautiful photo ready paper got borked in the final print. I guess there is significant interest in authoring ACM papers in Word[0]. [0] https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  Roboticist here: we use it. Aerospace generally does too. Computer vision seems to. In fact I think most tech related journals do, iirc.
- ashton314 3y ago
  CS PhD student here. Everyone uses LaTeX.
- ls612 3y ago
  Latex is ubiquitous in Economics.
Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
In my CS subfield we use latex, but switching journals still tends to be a huge pain, as many use extremely brittle templates that can easily create incompatibilities and make the paper not compile if you don't spend considerable amounts of time debugging after making the change. In addition, different journals have different length limits, word limits, structural requirements, one vs. two column (which may make your figures overflow), what goes in the main text vs. supplementary material, bibliography format changes that sometimes are only partially handled by bibtex, etc., so basically what the post says. At least, ChatGPT seems to be very good at cutting text to try and fit length limits. And no one gives up with a paper, although this might have more to do with location than discipline (the academic evaluation system in my country is heavily metrics-based, having indexed papers is what makes or breaks careers). People resubmit and resubmit and resubmit, typically to venues with a progressively lower bar, until the paper is accepted. In CS we also have competitive conference publications and, at least in my subfield, they don't have these problems to such a great extent as journals (as at least their latex templates tend to be decent, and some of them have the same length limits). One of the reasons why I prefer conference to journal publications.
jltsiren 3y ago
> Perhaps this is true in the field discussed in the essay, but in my field (a natural science) formatting is taken care of with latex stylesheets, so the effort of switching to another journal format usually amounts to changing a few lines. That doesn't sound like the LaTeX I use. When you switch to another stylesheet, it often changes key dimensions such as page size and the number of columns. Then you have to reformat and possibly even redesign the figures, tables, equations, pseudocode, and so on. And it's quite likely that some packages you are using don't work properly with the new stylesheet, or even don't work at all, so you get some weird issues to debug. But that's about the technical layout, which isn't the concern here, as the publisher is usually responsible for that. In biomedical fields, manuscripts are usually just Word documents with some basic formatting. The real issue is that different journals have different ideas about the length, content, and structure of the paper. When you switch to another journal, the paper itself often needs a major revision.
- rowanc1 3y ago
  One possibility is to use a tool like MyST Markdown, which can export to many different LaTeX templates, or create a website. https://myst-tools.org/docs/mystjs/creating-pdf-documents https://myst-tools.org/docs/mystjs/creating-pdf-documents Then the switching of templates actually is one line. There is also hope to get a bit further in the publishers system (which ultimately needs JATS XML), because MyST can also export to JATS (which is used for pubmed etc.).
ketzu 3y ago
In my CS field, it is common to submit to different conferences at least if a paper gets rejected (because rejections can be very superficial). Fitting for a new conference template often also imposes rewrites, because of different length requirements, changes in length in the new latex template, different accessibility support (e.g., image descriptions in acm) and many more subtle changes. It was a major pain for me. Conferences especially have this problem because they lack major revisions and instead reject. But they are the goto way of publishing. The journals I interacted with were less of a problem, as they just handed out major revisions. The only rejection I remember was with a recommendation for a more fitting journal.
ricksunny 3y ago
>(are there any here on HN?) While I'm not slinging manuscriots left & rught, my coauthor and I got the below linked one into Frontiers last year. The reviewers' feedback was all based on the substance. The formst we had submitted was Google Docs printed to PDF. There might have been a standard Frontiers template or font choice I started from from the outset, I can't remember but I definitely wasn't using their standard reference format in-line in the manuscript, as doing so would have made some sections and tables nigh-on unreadable for the reviewers without a lot of formatting effort. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2022.909945/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2022.9099...
TechBro8615 3y ago
Anyone in CS will use LaTeX with no problem. But the average biologist who is publishing a paper doesn't want to also learn some esoteric pseudo programming language just to format their papers. They'd rather write in Word.
hedora 3y ago
It hadn't occurred to me that dealing with sleazy publishers also implied wasting huge amounts of time on some not-Latex submission format. I hope PLOS (and whatever similar things have sprouted up) take the hint, and allow non-time-wasting submission formats.

physPop 3y ago

It’s a huge issue in most fields. No one uses latex anymore outside of niches like math and physics.

pbasista 3y ago
> No one uses latex anymore That is a very broad statement. Do you have any data to back it up? Do you suggest that it was used in the past but that has changed? If so, why?
PartiallyTyped 3y ago
Well, we should go back to that, or something that is easier.
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  I've been shilling https://typst.app/ https://typst.app/ to anyone who will listen (and some who won't), it's great. There are still missing features compared to latex, but what exists seems so much more intuitive.
  - abdullahkhalids 3y ago
    [deleted]
    - Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
      It seems to be on github with an Apache license (https://github.com/typst/typst https://github.com/typst/typst). Is there a catch I'm not seeing?
      - sebzim4500 3y ago
        He's probably upset that the online editor is closed source. Personally I think that's a reasonable monetization strategy long term.
        Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
        In Latex, the online editor i know (Overleaf) is also closed source.
  - stevejpurves 3y ago
    The fast pdf generation is great but I lament on their choice of markup language, why create yet another? I'm a fan of writing content in markdown and there is at least on markdown flavour (MyST markdown) that gives the essential writing features needed for papers. (citations, cross references, figures, tables)
  - PartiallyTyped 3y ago
    I can see why! Many thanks fren, this will likely make my life easier. Much appreciated!
noslenwerdna 3y ago
Wait, math and physics are niche?
- tut-urut-utut 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 3y ago
    Your account has continued to post unsubstantive and flamebait comments to HN, a lot of them, after we asked you to stop. We're going to have to ban you if you keep doing this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dev_tty01 3y ago
>No one uses latex anymore Not true. IEEE, one of the largest professional orgs, accepts Latex. So does ACM, a huge comp sci org. I'm not familiar with others, but wouldn't be surprised if many others still accept Latex.
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  Aiaa, aaai, many others follow as well. Its ubiquitous.
- eldaisfish 3y ago
  How many IEEE papers are submitted using the latex template? I wonder, because word-style formatting can be spotted in several of their papers. Latex is a giant pain to use - and i say this as someone who still uses it to write scientific articles. Services like overleaf exist but that is sometimes not an option with proprietary work.
- eddieh 3y ago
  Depends on the specific publication/conference within the org. ACM accepts LaTeX or Word. I always write in LaTeX, but got a paper accepted to an ACM conference that wanted Word and my beautiful photo ready paper got borked in the final print. I guess there is significant interest in authoring ACM papers in Word[0]. [0] https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template
jvanderbot 3y ago
Roboticist here: we use it. Aerospace generally does too. Computer vision seems to. In fact I think most tech related journals do, iirc.
ashton314 3y ago
CS PhD student here. Everyone uses LaTeX.
ls612 3y ago
Latex is ubiquitous in Economics.

Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago

In my CS subfield we use latex, but switching journals still tends to be a huge pain, as many use extremely brittle templates that can easily create incompatibilities and make the paper not compile if you don't spend considerable amounts of time debugging after making the change. In addition, different journals have different length limits, word limits, structural requirements, one vs. two column (which may make your figures overflow), what goes in the main text vs. supplementary material, bibliography format changes that sometimes are only partially handled by bibtex, etc., so basically what the post says. At least, ChatGPT seems to be very good at cutting text to try and fit length limits. And no one gives up with a paper, although this might have more to do with location than discipline (the academic evaluation system in my country is heavily metrics-based, having indexed papers is what makes or breaks careers). People resubmit and resubmit and resubmit, typically to venues with a progressively lower bar, until the paper is accepted. In CS we also have competitive conference publications and, at least in my subfield, they don't have these problems to such a great extent as journals (as at least their latex templates tend to be decent, and some of them have the same length limits). One of the reasons why I prefer conference to journal publications.

jltsiren 3y ago

> Perhaps this is true in the field discussed in the essay, but in my field (a natural science) formatting is taken care of with latex stylesheets, so the effort of switching to another journal format usually amounts to changing a few lines. That doesn't sound like the LaTeX I use. When you switch to another stylesheet, it often changes key dimensions such as page size and the number of columns. Then you have to reformat and possibly even redesign the figures, tables, equations, pseudocode, and so on. And it's quite likely that some packages you are using don't work properly with the new stylesheet, or even don't work at all, so you get some weird issues to debug. But that's about the technical layout, which isn't the concern here, as the publisher is usually responsible for that. In biomedical fields, manuscripts are usually just Word documents with some basic formatting. The real issue is that different journals have different ideas about the length, content, and structure of the paper. When you switch to another journal, the paper itself often needs a major revision.

rowanc1 3y ago
One possibility is to use a tool like MyST Markdown, which can export to many different LaTeX templates, or create a website. https://myst-tools.org/docs/mystjs/creating-pdf-documents https://myst-tools.org/docs/mystjs/creating-pdf-documents Then the switching of templates actually is one line. There is also hope to get a bit further in the publishers system (which ultimately needs JATS XML), because MyST can also export to JATS (which is used for pubmed etc.).

ketzu 3y ago

In my CS field, it is common to submit to different conferences at least if a paper gets rejected (because rejections can be very superficial). Fitting for a new conference template often also imposes rewrites, because of different length requirements, changes in length in the new latex template, different accessibility support (e.g., image descriptions in acm) and many more subtle changes. It was a major pain for me. Conferences especially have this problem because they lack major revisions and instead reject. But they are the goto way of publishing. The journals I interacted with were less of a problem, as they just handed out major revisions. The only rejection I remember was with a recommendation for a more fitting journal.

ricksunny 3y ago

>(are there any here on HN?) While I'm not slinging manuscriots left & rught, my coauthor and I got the below linked one into Frontiers last year. The reviewers' feedback was all based on the substance. The formst we had submitted was Google Docs printed to PDF. There might have been a standard Frontiers template or font choice I started from from the outset, I can't remember but I definitely wasn't using their standard reference format in-line in the manuscript, as doing so would have made some sections and tables nigh-on unreadable for the reviewers without a lot of formatting effort. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2022.909945/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2022.9099...

TechBro8615 3y ago

Anyone in CS will use LaTeX with no problem. But the average biologist who is publishing a paper doesn't want to also learn some esoteric pseudo programming language just to format their papers. They'd rather write in Word.

hedora 3y ago

It hadn't occurred to me that dealing with sleazy publishers also implied wasting huge amounts of time on some not-Latex submission format. I hope PLOS (and whatever similar things have sprouted up) take the hint, and allow non-time-wasting submission formats.