Why do some journal proofs insert dozens of typesetting mistakes? Why do some journals change the final software and do not provide a template for the final draft(e.g. contains the same font as in the gallery proof)?
I often hear that some of my colleagues get unacceptable proofs (often even from Elsevier journals).
I am checking an Elsevier paper (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0141029619305024) which was in the state of Galley proof (after acceptance)

letters in math equations look different: (converted all math equations to vectorgraphics)


letters have inconsistent size even in the continuous text


made a screenshot of the rendering of jpeg-graphics if the jpeg-image contained two images (a) and (b)

where they converted all simple *.eps-graphics (nothing complex) to *.jpeg with 110dpi (text is almost unreadable) also declare a min of 500dpi in the author guidelines


changed the font from the font declared in the template(&quot;Times&quot;) to &quot;Charis SIL&quot;, now the continuous text is in Charis SIL, but the equations, the variables in the text and the figures are in Times
The font color is generally dark gray, but in math equations it is black


the variables in micro-environment are not aligned with the surrounding text (sometimes smaller letters are even higher then capital letters)


several manual line-breaks are awful (some lines contain more space than letters) also a short word is following




some lines start with &quot;,&quot; or &quot;.&quot;



converted a table (conatining text and two eps-graphics) to jpeg with obvious compression artifacts


added space between &quot;mm&quot; and &quot;²&quot;


removed spaces


some citations are outside the page border



According to the pdf metadata, it was created with Prince 10 rev 7, which only supports SVG as a vector format.
Why don't they convert all eps/pdf-files with inkscape to svg (can be done fully automatic as a batch-process e.g. pdftocairo.exe -svg &quot;Input.pdf&quot; &quot;Output.svg&quot;)?
In my field, if I use a space instead of a small space, it is unacceptable or at least unprofessional. (As a reader, such mistakes are evident and disruptive.) And it is so super-important to add it as vector, but then the proofs ruin everything! Why do they have guidelines for authors if the journal introduces illegal (according to the guidelines) mistakes on their own?
Why do some journals change the final software and do not provide a template for the final draft?
Because they are incompetent.

That's about it, really. But don't lump all publishers/journals as one - the typesetters for one journal might not be the same as that for another journal, even one published by the same publisher, and of course there are good and bad employees everywhere.