Journals for Voynich Manuscript Decipherment

[Anton]

Can you summarise your argument to reduce the number of pages?

What kind of argument is it?

The main argument to reduce the number of pages comes from the historical practice of printing, where the number of pages in a journal is typically limited, while the number of those wishing to publish their research is hopefully quite large in a society where sciences do flourish. These two factors come to a contradiction further complicated by the sad circumstance that printing a journal, let alone running all other aspects of its production, comes at a cost. These complications are partially resolved by setting some reasonable limit on the number of pages of an article. Oftentimes journals charge fees on all pages or on "excess" pages, e.g. the hard limit is 10 pages, but you have 4 pages for free and if you have a 6 page article you pay just for two excess pages. Some journals will not charge fees on the author but rather on their institute, and even will not reject the (worthy) paper if nobody pays, but just the author will not receive free preprints in that case.

From the said perspective, the number of pages means little when we shift from a printed journal to an electronic journal. However, prior to being printed, papers are typically reviewed, which consumes time of editors and (importantly!) peers reviewing the paper. Hence the page limit acts also as reasonable time saver in the process of periodic publication. If, due to huge delays in reviewing, a scientific journal gets published too rarely, it will fail to represent state of the art which would present a competitive disadvantage.

Last but not least, there are the readers. As Mr. Holmes once put it, "if page 534 finds us only in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable".

@Pardis Motiee If your first goal is to receive some kind of review (so that you don't ultimately publish something nonsensical), I will take the opportunity to highlight that we have the (long neglected) You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in this forum where one can publish a draft of their article and (hopefully) get some review from the forum Editors. It's of course not exactly a peer review in the sense of the word of a scientific journal, just some detailed feedback from people who've been for some time in the Voynich world and are hopefully able to express relevant critique. No review is guaranteed though - that depends on the spare time and enthusiasm of our Editors who are not many. E.g. I think an article of mine still hangs there unreviewed for I don't know how many years. Mind that the page quantity of ninety nine may somewhat repel them from your article.

If we consider an electronic journal, 8 pages are definitely fine, and the supplementary material is just hyperlinked. But I'm not sure if you really need that huge amount of supplementary material, and if the journal of your choice would accept that.