The process of submitting a manuscript has yet to catch up with the publishing revolution that is being spurred by open-access journals, data repositories, ORCID, Publons, PubPeer, arXiv and bioRxiv. A centralized, streamlined online-submission process that serves all journals is sorely needed to circumvent this inefficient procedure.

The service offered by Peerage of Science is a step in the right direction (see go.nature.com/2pbsby2) but it is limited by its main function as a preprint-reviewing facility. And although proposals to submit manuscripts in a common format are timely (see Q. Guo Nature 540, 525; 2016 and J. P. Moore Nature 542, 31; 2017), different submission systems remain a bottleneck.

Authors need to re-enter details such as contact information and keywords every time they submit to a different journal. Other, spurious data may be requested that have no bearing on the review process or publication decision, perhaps because the information is useful to the journal (submission to journals such as PeerJ is notably less time-consuming).

In the past 20 years, the United Kingdom and the United States have each developed systems that allow prospective students to apply to several universities using the same form. If universities can create and collaborate on such a system, surely academic journals can do so too.