@tam

Smooth submission process, initial decision made within ~10 days, relatively few initial submission requirements-- recommend.

A relatively standard experience. Dislike: They require you submit 4 suggested reviewers, as well as provide a reason why you selected each reviewer. Like: Turnaround time to initial decision was less than 2 weeks.

Obviously a highly competitive journal, but was a smooth submission process, and the editorial office was responsive, timely, and helpful with a technical issue we experienced. One star shy because it would be terrific if the initial submission process had a more "format free" approach. But overall a smooth process.

DMID indicates a "Your Paper Your Way" initial submission process, which is great-- in theory, authors can submit and not worry about minor formatting changes prior to editorial review. However, our submission was bounced back to us twice: once because, for non-US authors, 3 of the 5 suggested reviewers (required) must be from a county other than the author's own; and a second time because the authorship contribution statement was not included "after the references." Correspondence and turnaround was timely, with initial editorial decision coming < 2 weeks after initial submission. Relatively smooth submission process; but not entirely format-free as advertised.

Prior to any sort of editorial review, our manuscript was unsubmitted for the following reasons: - it wasn't submitted on a specific template - references listed 6 authors before the "et al." as opposed to 3 - references in the text were superscript instead of in square brackets - figures with subparts (e.g., Fig 1a, 1b, etc.) weren't combined into single figures. When we inquired whether these time-consuming changes could be made following editorial review, we were told they were "sad to say" these changes needed to be addressed in advance. (At which point, they also added a couple other issues to the list: consent form wasn't a specific template, contributorship statement wasn't formatted specifically.) Extremely frustrating experience.