You cannot publish with the MS Word 2007 format

... at least not in Science or Nature (also other journal from the Nature family e.g. EMBO journal) as Undernews reported. These publisher cannot handle the new format (docx). Hopefully this issue stimulates to rethink the current pipelines. Having a work flow based on a proprietary format (and despite its name Microsofts new Office Open XML format is also not really open) is in my opinion a bad idea as it forces possible authors to use a distinct software to create the publication. Not everybody can effort the Microsoft products or wants to use them. Sure, LaTeX would be a cool solution (and is used e.g. by some mathematical journals) but for many people it is just too nerdy. But how about ODF? It is a file format that is open, ISO-accepted, XML-based, and used by many (mostly open source) office suits like OpenOffice.

[via O'Reilly Radar]