I think one of the sillier rituals in academia is composing cover letters to accompany our manuscripts when we submit them to a journal.
We stopped submitting manuscripts by post about 20 years ago. You’d put three copies of your manuscript into a manila folder, and cover these manuscripts with a letter, as a form of explanation. “Hi, I’m sending you these manuscripts because you’re the editor and I’m submitting it to your journal.” And while you’re at it, it doesn’t hurt to write few lines why you think the paper is exciting and relevant for the audience of the journal.
But now that we’re not doing manuscript reviews by post, why are we still doing cover letters?
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