“Outwrite” Rejection?

Outright rejection of your article is less common than you think. The most frequent outcome is that your article is “accepted with (minor or major) revisions.” You will then resubmit a revised version of your manuscript that adheres to some or most of the reviewers’ and editor’s suggestions or demands. In my experience, this usually improves the manuscript.

If your paper is rejected, the reason is most often that it falls outside the journal’s aims and scope or is found not appropriate for its readership. See my blog “Find Your Target Journal” to get some ideas about avoiding that.

The editor-in-chief is responsible for maintaining the journal’s identity and scope and usually has the final word on what gets published. There are some things you can take to help ensure favorable responses from the reviewers and the editor. Review your manuscript carefully to confirm that it clearly conveys your intended meaning and adheres to the Journal’s author instructions. Correct any spelling and grammatical errors. Check for and fix any inconsistencies in how data are reported in the text, tables, and figures, as well as in your use of technical or experimental terminology and measurement units. Verify that the procedures described in the Materials and Methods section align with the findings reported in the Results section. Make sure you have thoroughly described your statistical methods and how they were applied, as this can anticipate and avoid questions about the validity of your conclusions. Ensure that the Discussion clearly highlights what is novel about your work and/or how it advances existing knowledge.

Many journals ask authors to suggest potential reviewers, but they generally prefer that you do not list current or recent collaborators. If you have trusted colleagues or friends who cannot be peer reviewers, consider asking one or more of them to conduct an informal pre-submission review of your manuscript. Ask your favorite AI assistant to give you a list of investigators who have published studies “similar” to yours. You will have to decide on which similarities you want it to look for.

Evidence suggests that the first journal that authors submit their manuscripts to do, in fact, eventually accept their work. A study published in the journal Science (Calcagno et al., Science 2012;338:1065–69) tracked more than 80,000 manuscripts submitted to 923 biology journals between 2006 and 2008. It reported that about 75% were ultimately published by the first journal to which they were submitted. Moreover, papers that underwent one or more rounds of revision before final acceptance were cited more frequently than those accepted without any changes. So, if you prepare carefully before submission, then you are likely to receive constructive revision requests that will improve your article, attract readers’ attention, and increase its citation impact. Remember the five Ps–“prior preparation prevents poor performance.” That being said, It’s better to be an optimist—or at least a realist—than a pessimist about your chances, isn’t it?