Microsoft Word and other word processing programs have been around for quite some time now — enough that most researchers are fairly familiar with it — and so DrugMonkey wonders why manuscript submission policies still say that figures must be submitted in a separate document from the text. "Even with the considerable limitations of Microsoft Word and my own skills with it, I've been able to insert figures more or less where I want them in my grant applications for years. Over a decade," he writes, adding that most of the researchers whose grants he has reviewed have also been able to do that. "Why not allow the authors to format the manuscript in a pdf with the figures inserted as the authors feel best?"
Thomas Mailund "couldn't agree more," as he writes at his blog, adding: