Sir
John P. Moore's criticism, in Correspondence, of electronic journal submission, “Online submission makes authors do all the work” (Nature 433, 800; 200510.1038/433800d), only examines the author–editor interaction. The poor peer reviewer also suffers from electronic manuscript submission.
I am generally happy to review papers relevant to my own expertise, unless I'm too busy. But papers forwarded as e-mail attachments almost invariably cause headaches when I am unable to open or print some or all of the associated illustrations. It recently took two days to find someone with the necessary know-how and software to open and print a plate at publication size, yet it took me less than an hour to review the associated paper.
Given the choice, I always ask editors to send me a hard copy. I am never so free as to be able to review a paper immediately, so the delay of even intercontinental mail is not an inconvenience.
Worse still are some grant-awarding bodies. Recently, I couldn't review a proposal when asked by the US National Science Foundation. But just saying “No” by return e-mail is not acceptable. Instead, it is necessary to open the attachment and follow instructions to the “Decline” box.
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Donovan, S. Reviewers not attached to online submission. Nature 434, 956 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/434956b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/434956b