Why do so many publishing venues limit the length of paper submissions? I wonder why so many publishing venues limit the length of paper submissions. I understand that such page limits were first created when papers were published offline, but nowadays, what are the reasons? One important downside of page limits it that authors often crop useful details out, which hinders reproducibility and/or understanding.
Earlier this year, I attended an editor’s panel at a conference, which included some editors of letter journals, i.e., journals with a strong length limit and higher relevance threshold (e.g., PRL with a limit of 3500 words, if you have no figures). In their presentations and answers they implied the following benefits of a length limit for these letter journals:


It accelerates the peer-review process, as the reviewers need to read less.
It makes the papers more attractive for readers (and thus increases the impact), as they need less time to read them and focus on the central results.