Format-Free Submission: What It Is & How It Works

Format-free submission — also described as "format-neutral" or "any-format" submission — has become an increasingly common option at academic journals over the past decade. The premise is straightforward: at initial submission, you send your manuscript in whatever document format and structural style you prefer, without first reformatting it to the journal's house style. For researchers who habitually submit to multiple outlets across a revision and rejection cycle, this represents a meaningful reduction in administrative burden. But format-free does not mean requirement-free. Understanding precisely what journals do and do not waive under a format-free policy is essential to making it work in your favour.

Why Journals Adopted Format-Free Submission

The traditional model required authors to invest hours reformatting manuscripts — adjusting reference styles, restructuring sections, resizing figures, and rewriting abstracts — before submission to each new journal, regardless of whether the paper would survive desk review. For journals that rejected 70–80 % of submissions at the desk stage before peer review, this represented an enormous and largely wasted effort distributed across the research community. Publishers and editors began to recognise this as a systemic inefficiency: the intellectual quality of a manuscript has no relationship to whether its citations are formatted in APA, Chicago, or Vancouver style.

The format-free movement was also partly a response to author feedback. Surveys of academic authors consistently identified pre-submission reformatting as among the most time-consuming and frustrating aspects of publishing. By moving detailed formatting requirements to the revision stage — after the journal has confirmed genuine interest in the manuscript — journals preserve author time and reduce friction without compromising peer-review quality.

Today, format-free initial submission is offered by journals across many disciplines and publisher portfolios. Some journals have adopted it selectively for particular submission categories; others have made it the default across all manuscript types.

What "Format-Free" Actually Means

A format-free policy removes the requirement that your manuscript conform to the journal's specific structural and citation formatting guidelines at initial submission. In practical terms this typically means:

• You do not need to reformat your reference list to the journal's preferred citation style (e.g. switching from APA to Vancouver).
• You do not need to restructure your paper's section headings to match the journal's preferred template (e.g. converting a thematic structure to IMRaD).
• You do not need to resize or reformat figures and tables to meet the journal's final production specifications.
• You may submit in common document formats (Word, PDF, LaTeX) without converting to a specific template.

What this does NOT mean is that you can submit an incomplete or underdeveloped manuscript. The format-free policy relaxes how content is presented, not what content is required.

What Format-Free Submission Still Requires

This distinction is critical and frequently misunderstood. Even under the most permissive format-free policy, journals still require the following, and manuscripts that omit them are typically returned at desk review without being sent for peer review.

Complete Intellectual Content

The manuscript must present a complete piece of scholarly work: a clear research question or objective, a described methodology, presented results or argument, and a discussion of significance. Sections may be labelled differently from the journal's preferred structure, but the substance they contain must be fully developed. A manuscript that is conceptually incomplete — that lacks a conclusion, omits key methodological detail, or presents only preliminary data — will not benefit from a format-free policy.

Readable and Internally Consistent References

While the journal will not reject your manuscript because your references use APA rather than Chicago style, the reference list must be complete and internally consistent. Every in-text citation must correspond to an entry in the reference list and vice versa. References must include sufficient information for a reviewer to locate the cited work: author names, publication year, title, journal or publisher, and where applicable volume, issue, and page numbers or DOI. An incomplete or inconsistent reference list delays peer review and signals inattention that can influence editorial perception of the manuscript's overall quality.

Ethical and Compliance Statements

Format-free policies do not waive ethical declaration requirements. Depending on the journal and discipline, you may still be required to include statements covering: ethics committee approval and participant consent for human subjects research; data availability and access; funding sources and acknowledgements; author contributions; and conflicts of interest declarations. These statements protect the integrity of the peer-review process and in many cases are required by research funding bodies regardless of where you publish.

Scope Fit and Basic Quality Thresholds

Format-free submission does not guarantee that your manuscript will proceed to peer review. Editors still conduct a desk review to confirm that the work falls within the journal's scope, meets basic standards of scholarly rigour, and is not previously published or under simultaneous review elsewhere. A manuscript that is out of scope or that the handling editor considers insufficiently developed for peer review will be returned regardless of the submission format.

The Limits of Format-Free: What Happens at Revision

Format-free is an initial-submission courtesy, not a permanent exemption. If your manuscript is invited to revise and resubmit, or is accepted, you will typically be asked to prepare a final version that conforms to the journal's formatting requirements in full. At this stage the journal's production guidelines become mandatory: reference style, figure resolution, section structure, word limits, and any supplementary materials specifications all apply.

The practical implication is that you have not eliminated the formatting work — you have deferred it to a point when you know the work is worth completing. For many authors, this is a rational trade: investing formatting time only after you have a confirmed offer of publication, rather than speculatively for every outlet you approach, is a more efficient allocation of effort.

Pre-Submission Checklist for Format-Free Submissions

Use the following checklist to confirm that your manuscript is ready for format-free initial submission. Meeting all of these criteria maximises your chances of passing desk review and proceeding to peer evaluation.

• Research question or objective: Clearly stated in the introduction, with explicit scope.
• Methodology: Described in sufficient detail for an informed reader to evaluate appropriateness and reproducibility.
• Results or argument: Fully presented, not summarised or deferred to a supplementary document.
• Discussion and conclusion: Present and substantive, connecting findings to the broader literature.
• Abstract: Self-contained, accurate representation of the complete paper (typically 150–300 words).
• Keywords: Five to eight terms that accurately represent the subject matter.
• References: Complete, internally consistent, and formatted according to a recognised citation style (your choice of style is acceptable at initial submission).
• Ethical declarations: All required statements included (check the journal's specific requirements).
• Author information: All authors named, affiliations listed, corresponding author designated.
• Cover letter: Confirming originality, the absence of simultaneous review, and the paper's scope fit.
• Word count: Within the journal's stated limits, even for format-free submissions — page-limit exemptions typically do not apply.

Format-Free Submission and BRJ's Guidelines

The specific format-free provisions that apply to Boston Research Journals submissions are described in the author guidelines. The guidelines also provide access to formatting templates and reference style examples for use at the revision stage, and are available from the formatting and templates page. If you have questions about whether your manuscript meets the requirements for initial submission, the author guidelines are the authoritative reference — they take precedence over any general description in this post. Frequently asked questions about the submission process are addressed at the FAQ page.

Publish with Boston Research Journals

When your manuscript is ready — regardless of its current formatting state — you can begin the submission process at our manuscript submission page, where you will find step-by-step instructions and access to the submission system.