Infographic: 10 Formatting Errors to Avoid Before Submitting Your Manuscript: A Checklist

You’ve done the research, the writing, the endless revisions, and now you have a polished manuscript ready to submit. But before you upload your work and hit “submit,” there are some key things you need to check and follow. Even strong research papers can hit a wall when journal guidelines and requirements are not met. Avoidable mistakes like formatting inconsistencies, missing metadata, overlooked figure file requirements—these technical slip-ups are more common than you’d think, and they can hold your work back before it ever reaches peer review.

To save you time (and frustration), we’ve put together a checklist of key formatting pitfalls to watch out for. Don’t think of it as just following rules; think of it as giving your research the best possible start to a smooth publishing process.