The rationale for submitting a chemical structural article to a journal in CIF format is outlined. Most journals currently request a CIF as supplementary material, and minimum requirements must be established for the useful information content of the CIF. Acta Crystallographica Section E and IUCrData are journals that routinely accept full papers in CIF format. IUCrData is considered as a case study. To submit a paper to such a journal, authors need to: generate the results of their structural studies in one or more CIFs; add content to match the journal's requirements for submission; merge multiple CIFs if several structures are described; validate the complete submission against the journal's published requirements (through a standalone program or via network services); format and preview the typeset representation of their paper; and submit their paper to the journal along with any graphics and structure-factor or other experimental data sets. A detailed list of the data-validation criteria used in the checkCIF procedure is included.