jacs-length-management

Article vs Communication and Format Norms (jacs-length-management)

When to trigger

• You must decide Article vs Communication
• The manuscript feels over- or under-length for the chosen format
• You are unsure what moves to the SI to fit format norms
• Figure/scheme count is high and needs disciplining

Choosing the format

Question	Communication	Article
Is the core advance a single, urgent, high-impact result?	Yes	Often part of a larger story
Can full proof live in the SI with a concise main text?	Yes	No — needs full main-text treatment
Is broad scope / multi-system / deep mechanism central to the claim?	No	Yes
Timeliness vs completeness	Timeliness dominates	Completeness dominates

Verify the current article types, length, figure, and word limits on the JACS author page — these change and differ by format. Do not hard-code limits.

Right-sizing the main text

• Lead with the advance; the introduction should be tight (frame the gap, state the thesis).
• Results & Discussion carries only what proves the claim and its generality/mechanism; exhaustive variation goes to the SI.
• One headline scheme/figure per major point; merge panels rather than adding figures.
• Conclusion is short: what is established and what is now enabled.

What stays vs what moves to SI

Keep in main text	Move to SI
Central scheme/result and one scope figure	Full substrate tables and optimization grids
Key mechanism figure + decisive evidence	Complete kinetic/labeling datasets
Crystal-structure figure + CCDC #	Full crystallographic tables, checkCIF
One or two essential spectra (if needed)	All spectra copies, procedures

Trimming tactics (without losing rigor)

• Convert prose describing a table into the table; delete the prose.
• Remove optimization narration; cite the SI optimization table for the chosen conditions.
• Cut redundant restatements between intro, results, and conclusion.
• Combine related schemes; move "also worked" examples to the SI scope table.

Checklist

• Format chosen with an explicit reason (urgency/impact vs completeness)
• Main text contains only claim-essential evidence; rest in SI
• Figure/scheme count disciplined; panels merged where possible
• No section repeats another; conclusion is not the abstract again
• Current JACS format/limit norms verified on the author page
• If Communication: the claim is fully supported by SI + concise main text

Anti-patterns

• Choosing Communication for a story that needs Article-level support
• Padding an Article with optimization narration better suited to the SI
• Figure sprawl: many near-duplicate schemes instead of merged panels
• Hard-coding outdated word/figure limits instead of checking current norms
• Trimming so hard that a key claim loses its supporting evidence

Operating pass for Journal of the American Chemical Society

Treat this skill as an executable review pass, not a prose hint. First lock the chemical novelty, characterization chain, controls, and scope or mechanism evidence; then judge whether the current manuscript answers the venue's real reader: chemistry reviewers who expect a molecule/material/reaction claim to be supported by rigorous characterization and mechanistic insight.

• Do the pass: Return a claim-evidence-risk ledger rather than a prose-only diagnosis; every recommendation must point to a manuscript location or missing artifact.
• Return a ledger: give claim / evidence / risk / manuscript location rows, so the next agent can edit rather than rediscover the issue.
• Sibling guard: compare against ACS Central Science for broad conceptual reach, Angewandte for communication style, specialized ACS journals for narrower chemistry; if a sibling owns the contribution, recommend re-routing before polishing format.
• Stop condition: do not give submission-ready advice until the pack's resources/official-source-map.md has been checked for volatile rules and the manuscript has one concrete fix for the largest venue-specific risk.

Output format

【Format】Article / Communication (+ reason)
【Main-text load】essential only? Y/N — move to SI: [...]
【Figure count】N; merges suggested: [...]
【Limits verified】Y/N (on JACS author page)
【Next】jacs-cover-letter → jacs-submission

Related resources

• ../jacs-submission/templates/manuscript_template.md — section skeleton for both formats