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I for myself, when reading papers, almost always miss important information such as justifications for certain design decisions, implementation details or more detailed differentiation to related work.

So for my own papers I tend to generously include such information. However, in the opinion of my co-authors and PhD-advisor, this leads to "too long" papers that reviewers may be unwilling to read due to time constraints leaving a bad impression on the reviewers, and they therefore may be biased against the paper.

If I were a reviewer, however, I would be thankful for every additional information & explanation (even if redundant or maybe "obvious") and would be more annoyed by missing content.

So my question is for those of you that are often involved in reviews, how they think about this issue. Are you, bluntly put, more annoyed by missing details or by "too long" papers ?

EDIT: I think the question is particularly relevant, considering the fact that restriction on the number of physically printed pages is much less relevant nowadays where most information is published and read online.

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    This calls for pure opinions. Page limits are still relevant as they force authors to be concise and clear. If you have a disagreement with your supervisor, deal with it there.
    – Buffy
    Commented Oct 1 at 12:14
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    Forcing authors to be concise and clear is a good thing, of course. This is not the question. The problem is that short length is not necessarily a good indicator of conciseness and clearness. As EInstein said: "Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler" :-)
    – zx-81
    Commented Oct 1 at 15:43

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A paper should be a clear and succinct report of the science with appropriate context. You have the option of shifting extra details and justifications to an expanded experimental section in the SI. Writing a paper is different from writing a thesis.

Also restrictions on pages is still relevant because journals must pay their non-scientific editorial staff.

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I do not see why a long paper should annoy reviewers. When I am asked to review a paper, I am most annoyed when it is vacuous, meaning too long for the information it contains. At the same time, there are excellent papers that are long because they need to be. If your paper is longer than 4 pages, correct structure is vital, so that the readers can get the information they need without reading everything from A to Z.

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  • thanks, this is helpful information. "vacuous, meaning too long for the information it contains. At the same time, there are excellent papers that are long because they need to be" yes, this is exactly the point.
    – zx-81
    Commented Oct 1 at 15:45
  • You should be extremely critical (to yourself) and ask, which "missing details" are essential for understanding your ideas -- these should stay in the paper, which are just necessary for a critical reviewer/reader to verify the validity of your methods (these can go to the supplemental material or into the addendum), and which can be skipped altogether. There is always an infinite amount of details about every paper that no one is interested in, so some reasonable cutoff is certainly needed. The paper should be not only valid but also interesting to read.
    – Vosoni
    Commented Oct 1 at 16:07

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