“Why We Say No! A Look Through the Editor’s Eye” (original) (raw)
A Review of Reasons for Rejection of Manuscripts
Journal for Research Scholars and Professionals of English Language Teaching, 2018
Rejection of submitted Paper is normal at high profile journals. Rejection is part of academic life (Venketasubramanian, N. and Hennerici, M., 2013). Publications in the top journals are critical for career advancement and for the advancement of science. Journals are the custodians of scientific endeavor and advancement. They aim to publish sound research with enduring conclusions that will stand careful scrutiny and validation (Emad M. El-Omar, 2014). A journal is an academic or scholarly publication of research papers /articles written by researchers, professors and other experts in a specialized discipline or field of study.
Rejection of Good Manuscripts: Possible Reasons, Consequences and Solutions
Journal of Clinical Research & Bioethics, 2015
This paper describes various aspects related to manuscript rejection particularly those manuscripts proved later on to be good and explains efforts made by some biomedical journals to reduce the loss in the scientifically sound works because of rejection. Rejection of good manuscripts is a complex issue and requires initiating further discussions to encourage the emergence of new and widely applicable solutions. Studying this issue or writing about it would help beginners who seek publishing their data but face difficulties solve the problems of rejection and getting their work published in a reasonable time frame. Also, appreciating that manuscript rejection is a common occurrence would help relieving the symptoms of frustration and reduce feelings of disappointment.
Manuscript Rejection: Causes and Remedies
Journal of Young Pharmacists, 2010
Research studies performed in the field of pharmaceutical sciences are often attempted to be converted into published manuscripts. A research manuscript published in a national or international journal of repute is essentially regarded as a substantiation of reliable and dependable studies carried out by a concerned research group. Manuscripts may be published in scientific journals as research articles, reviews, short communications, commentaries, proceedings, expert opinions or editorials. The most significant and popular types among them are 'Research' and 'Review' articles, which are frequently written, read, and popularized. After the author(s) put in a lot of effort and commitment to inscribe, each manuscript, when completed, is sent to a journal for publication, where it is selected depending on the topic of the manuscript and the broad field of the journal and its scope. Before sending the manuscript, it is the duty of the author(s) to understand the scope of the journal and make sure the topic of the manuscript fulfills the journals' requirements. This will allow for avoiding unnecessary delays.
Editorial: Why was my manuscript rejected?
Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics
Over the past few years, the JACMP has received on the average over 200 proffered manuscripts per year. During this period, over 40% of these manuscripts were recommended for rejection by one of the Associate Editors. Authors receiving rejection letters are often disappointed, because they believe their work is worthy of publication-otherwise, they would not have taken the time and effort to write and submit the manuscript. Recently I reviewed a series of rejected manuscripts to determine the principal causes for rejection of a manuscript, identifying the pitfalls facing authors. By identifying the causes for rejection, I hope to encourage authors to avoid these pitfalls, and submit manuscripts that have a greater probability of acceptance. The following are the four most common reasons why a JACMP submission was recommended for rejection by an Associate Editor:
PalArch’s Journal of Archaeology of Egypt/Egyptology, 2020
This article explores factors that are crucially associated with the manuscript rejection in highly ranked and impact factor journals with special reference to the English language/literature context. Literature reviews indicate that there are numerous reasons connected to different kinds of journal in the context of specialties. In other words, the criteria of rejection or acceptance differ in science from humanities or commerce. On the other hand, other journals like in the medical field(s) have entirely different reasons for acceptance or rejection. Academic writing and language also plays a major role at least in the case of papers/manuscripts that fall under the category of English language/literature. Having a close look at different journals, it appears that sometimes it depends on the mood of the editor who reviews at initial stage before sending the article for second stage peer review for reports. The actual problem appears to be with the chief editor because the rejection is less once the article is peer reviewed or refereed. The method of the study is qualitative-analytical which relied on content analysis of the rejection letters and interviews with the editors. Results will facilitate publications aspirants to develop an insight into rejection of papers in general and English language and literature in particular.
Manuscript Submission and Evaluation: Journal Characterization and Editors' Perception
Scientific journals have a great geographic reach and are used for reporting research, intended to the progress of science. As well as the research, the quality and reliability of journals should be also considered. The scientific community follows guidelines, codes of conduct in research and best practices to support its activities. Since the level of demand of quality scientific journals is constantly increasing, the editor plays a fundamental role in this scenario. Thus, this work will show the importance of the editor's management for the quality of the journal.
Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine, 2020
Background: A proportion of manuscripts submitted to scientific journals get rejected, for varied reasons. A systematic analysis of the reasons for rejection will be relevant to editors, reviewers, and prospective authors. We aimed to analyze the reasons for rejection of manuscripts submitted to the Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine, the flagship journal of Indian Psychiatric Society South Zonal Branch. Methods: We performed a content analysis of the rejection reports of all the articles submitted to the journal between January 1, 2018, and May 15, 2020. Rejection reports were extracted from the manuscript management website and divided into three types: desk rejections, post-peer-review rejections, and post-editorial-re-review rejections. They were analyzed separately for the rejection reasons, using a predefined coding frame. Results: A total of 898 rejection reports were available for content analysis. Rejection was a common fate for manuscripts across the types of submiss...
Reasons Reviewers Reject and Accept Manuscripts
Academic Medicine, 2001
Purpose. Scientific journals rely on peer review to maintain the high quality and standards of papers accepted for publication. The purpose of this study was to explore the strengths and weaknesses of medical education reports by analyzing the ratings and written comments given by external reviewers. Method. The author conducted a content analysis of reviewers' comments on 151 research manuscripts submitted to the 1997 and 1998 Research in Medical Education conference proceedings. The negative comments on 123 manuscripts that received ''questionable, probably exclude'' or ''definitely exclude'' overall ratings from at least one reviewer were evaluated. A similar analysis was performed on reviewers' positive comments for 28 manuscripts recommended unanimously for acceptance. Results. On average, four peers (4.1, SD = 0.97, range = 2-6) reviewed each manuscript. Of those recommended for exclusion, a mean of 2.3 reviewers recommended exclusion and each reviewer wrote a mean of 8.1 (SD = 5.7) reasons. The top ten reasons for rejection were: inappropriate or incomplete statistics; overinterpretation of results; inappropriate or suboptimal instrumentation; sample too small or biased; text difficult to follow; insufficient problem statement; inaccurate or inconsistent data reported; incomplete, inaccurate, or outdated review of the literature; insufficient data presented; and defective tables or figures. The main strengths noted in accepted manuscripts were the importance or timeliness of the problem studied, excellence of writing, and soundness of study design. Conclusion. While overstating the results and applying the wrong statistics can be fixed, other problems that the reviewers identified (ignoring the literature, designing poor studies, choosing inappropriate instruments, and writing poor manuscripts) are likely to be fatal flaws warranting rejection.
The fate of manuscripts rejected by a general medical journal
The American Journal of Medicine, 2000
The fate of research manuscripts that have been rejected by medical journals is of interest to authors, editors, and peer reviewers, but previous studies were conducted before the widespread availability of computerized literature searches. We update the previous investigations of the fate of rejected research manuscripts by using an electronic literature search and a larger sample, a longer follow-up, and more descriptive journal indexes. METHODS: Using a retrospective cohort study design, we examined 350 manuscripts rejected by the Annals of Internal Medicine, a general medical journal, during 1993 and 1994. We assessed the number of manuscripts that were published after initial rejection, time to eventual publication, journal type (general versus specialty), and journal impact factor (higher scores indicated greater impact) and immediacy index. RESULTS: Of 350 rejected manuscripts, 240 (69%, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 64% to 73%) were eventually published after a mean of 552 days (95% CI: 479 to 544 days, range 121 to 1,792 days). Of 226 rejected research articles and reviews, 159 (70%, 95% CI: 64% to 76%) were subsequently published in specialty journals. During 1993 and 1994, the mean impact factor for articles published in the Annals was 9.60 (95% CI: 9.56 to 9.64), compared with a mean of 3.09 (95% CI: 2.80 to 3.37) for the journals in which the rejected articles were subsequently published (mean difference 6.52, 95% CI: 6.24 to 6.81, P Ͻ 0.0001). The immediacy index was also lower for these journals. Time to publication had a weak negative correlation with the impact factor of the journal in which the article was published (correlation coefficient Ϫ0.15, P ϭ 0.007). CONCLUSIONS: The majority of the manuscripts that were rejected from a large general medical journal were eventually published after an average of 18 months. Most were published in specialty journals with lower impact factor and immediacy index ratings.
Reasons for Manuscript Rejection at Internal and Peer-review Stages
2021
The noble aim of publishing an article is to drive the wheel of scientific research forward; pragmatically speaking, though, and that is the case of many authors, a publication is a set criterion for their graduation or promotion. When publishing an article is mentioned, authors tend to contemplate rejection. Some fear rejection to the point of refraining from drafting the manuscript. To identify the most common reasons why submissions are rejected, internally by the journal editors (also referred to as preview or screening stage), and externally by the blind reviewers, we analysed the preview and review comments of 100 rejected submissions to the International Journal of Education and literacy Studies (IJELS) in the period between 2018 and 2020. The results of inductive thematic analysis indicated that the main reasons why submissions were rejected at the preview stage were problems with originality, poor language, scope, format, and organization. At the review stage, the main reasons were methodology, organization, language, insignificance, and literature review. Additionally, other less common reasons why manuscripts were rejected were that they lacked clear and conventional result reports, in-depth discussions, and thick conclusions, relevant, current, and impactful references among others to be discussed in this article. Many of these issues are, of course, fixable and future authors are highly encouraged to go through this paper and treat it as a guideline that will improve the quality of their manuscripts, and therefore, they will stand higher chances of acceptance.
"Reviewing manuscript itself is a great learning that tells you what’s going on in the minds of the authors. Going through the process of writing a manuscript myself as well reviewing the manuscripts by different authors was stimulating me to write these few lines since long. These reflections shall be of great help, I suppose, to the biomedical authors to leave their own box and come on the other side to see how the work looks through the vision of a reviewer. Clarity and simplicity of language, linguistic and grammatical accuracy, awareness of the length, and maintaining interest of a common reader are some of the strengths of a good manuscript."
Why are Manuscripts Unacceptable for Publication? An Analysis of EJE Rejections
This paper discusses reasons why manuscripts are not accepted for publication in Ethiopian Journal of Education (EJE). It intends to promote publication by domestic and/or international authors in EJE by analyzing the reasons for rejection of manuscripts. To gather the relevant data, a total of 101 rejected manuscripts submitted for publication EJE in the years 2008 to 2013 was collected and assessed. Moreover, contents of rejection letters were looked into. In doing so, the institutional affiliation of authors of the rejected manuscripts, editorial processes in which manuscripts were rejected mostly, the principal reasons for rejecting manuscripts of EJE, types of manuscripts which were more often exposed to rejection, and the nature of comments recommending rejection were analyzed. The results reveal that most of rejected manuscripts of EJE were affiliated from Addis Ababa University and Bahir Dar University, and the manuscripts were rejected mostly during the preliminary assessment, initial reviewing phase. Furthermore, using inappropriate research methods, poor data analysis and presentation, inadequacy of data to justify the conclusions, failure to follow the Journal's styles and formats (guidelines) and failure or unwilling to revise manuscripts as per reviewers' suggestions were principal reasons for rejecting manuscripts of EJE. The highest numbers of rejected manuscripts of EJE were also empirical studies which EJE accepts for publication consistently, and reviewers rejected those manuscripts after indicating their weaknesses and remarking further organization for resubmission. Finally, based on the results, the paper outlined recommendations for minimizing rejected manuscripts of EJE, and further studie s were suggested.
Rejected but not dejected: Dealing with an unfavourable decision on a scientific manuscript
Medical Journal Armed Forces India, 2018
Unfavourable decisions and rejections on submitted manuscripts are not uncommon in scholarly publications. Rejection in a particular journal need not be viewed as end of all hopes for aspiring authors. Substantial number of rejected manuscripts find their final place in one or the other journal after suitable revision. As an author, it is extremely important to be familiar with common reasons for unfavourable decision/rejection in order to prevent them or to find solutions.
The Top 10 Reasons Why Manuscripts Are Not Accepted for Publication
Introduction What the Literature Says A " Top 10 " List for RESPIRATORY CARE Summary This article discusses why many research projects that have been presented in abstract form are never published as full articles, and lists 10 reasons why manuscripts are not accepted for publication in RESPIRATORY CARE. Some of these reasons are easily avoidable or readily overcome. Included in this category is submission of manuscripts that do not correspond to the kinds of articles the Journal publishes, either in subject matter or in format. Poor writing impedes peer review and is unlikely to prejudice editors in an author's favor, although it is seldom the primary reason for rejection. Common deficiencies in the methods, results, and discussion sections prevent initial acceptance for publication but are at least potentially amenable to correction. More serious are fundamental defects in study design, which although correctable at the inception of a project, often doom the paper once the study has been completed. Two problems that are especially unfortunate for authors and potential readers alike are failing to revise and resubmit a manuscript after initial peer review and never preparing a full manuscript in the first place, after presentation of the work in abstract form. This special issue of RESPIRATORY CARE and other cited publications offer practical resources for authors to use in overcoming each of these problems.
Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences, 2018
How to cite this:Jawaid SA, Jawaid M. Common reasons for not accepting manuscripts for further processing after editor’s triage and initial screening. Pak J Med Sci. 2019;35(1):1-3. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.35.1.28 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.