My goal with this blog is to help early career researchers
navigate the rather complex world that is getting published. I can’t tell you
how to write the perfect article because, honestly, there is no such thing.
Yes, there are papers that whiz straight through the system and are published
without corrections. I’ve counted 2 out of the roughly 850-900 that I’ve
overseen. That’s less than one percent of
papers, which includes papers by the biggest names in the area. So don’t
expect your paper to be as flawless as you think it must be, especially since
you haven’t slept in three weeks due to proofreading it repeatedly before
submitting.
In order to help out your quest to get your paper to the
peer review stage, I’m going to, over the next few posts, give you the main
reasons for rejection. Other editorial staff may disagree, but I stand by my
list of reasons. Some may sound trivial, and that’s because they are.
Hopefully, by knowing why so many papers are rejected, you can make sure your
paper doesn’t fall victim to any of these pitfalls, and between your research
and my tips, your paper will have the best shot in life that we can give it.
Just for fun, I think I’ll go in no particular order except
for the top 5 (though the eagle-eyed amongst you will note that I’ve actually
given the number one reason in a previous post…)
10.) Your submission is unprofessional or unethical.
This one tends to shock academics the most. The last person
I mentioned it to responded with something along the lines of “WHAT? People actually submit papers like that?” Well,
in short, yes. To be fair, it’s often unintentional and perhaps just phrased
incorrectly. It doesn’t matter. Anything that will cause a journal legal or
reputational trouble will be rejected. Especially if you are an early career
author. It’s just not worth the gamble. What do I mean by each?:
That is libellous. Can you criticize someone’s research?
Yes, of course. Can you then, by extension, criticize someone personally? That
would be a no. [NB: we’re talking about scholars and not figures in history,
but still, keep the language professional – you wouldn’t call anyone anything
like a ‘pig’ in a journal submission. Unless you’re George Orwell. (That was an
admittedly poor Animal Farm joke for a former teacher)]
There is, of course, a grey area here, especially for
academics such as historians. The point I’m trying to make is be
careful with your language. If, for example, I were writing a piece that
criticised a historian of yore, then I would be careful to analyse and make
comments on the research and history of that historian rather than
personal criticism, unless my argument clearly and legitimately
concerned a personal evaluation.
3. Rule of thumb: don’t use language you wouldn’t want to read
to your grandmother. Or, more shockingly, your PhD supervisor’s grandmother.
There you go, that should have been a sufficient enough horror scenario.
9.) Poorly presented and clearly not proofread.
I will say it once. Proofreading is not the job of reviewers
and the editor. I will say it again in case you missed it. Proofreading is not
the job of reviewers and the editor. We have standards. We have guidelines on
presentation. Make sure you adhere to them. Don’t leave your tracked changes
with comments to your co-author unless you're at the revisions stage and have been instructed to do so. Don’t leave random indentations and paragraph
formatting because you’ve cut and pasted and moved around your text without
reformatting. Don’t leave typos, misspellings, grammatical errors, or miss out
sentences (or whole paragraphs). All modern word processing software has
spellcheck and grammar check. USE THEM. But don’t rely solely on them. They can
be confused. For example, have you noticed yet that I use both American and
British English spelling in my blog? Yeah, neither has my word processing
programme, because technically, both are correct and the program isn’t smart
enough to know that I’ve used something incorrectly. The key to submissions is
to act as though you are the professional that you are. Want your paper to be
taken seriously? Then take it seriously. And,
for the love of all things holy, make
sure you submit the correct file.
8.) Your submission isn’t an acceptable kind of paper. In short,
it’s not a real article.
Who would submit something that wasn’t a proper paper?
So. Many. People. If the journal you are submitting your paper to accepts only
certain kinds of papers, you better make sure your paper fits. For example, the
journal I currently work for does not normally accept opinion pieces,
preliminary white papers, discussion pieces, or unsolicited book reviews. So
any of the above that gets submitted is rejected pretty quickly. Make sure your
paper is a proper research paper if that’s what you want to submit. I once
received a submission that was a very pretty pictorial comparison of various
kinds of architecture with no reference, analysis, or evaluation whatsoever. We
aren’t an architecture journal, and we only publish research papers.
One of the themes of this blog is that every journal is
different and will have different aims & scopes and guidelines. This
includes acceptable kinds of papers. If your paper is rejected from journal A,
don’t just send it to journal B without another thought. Make sure that journal
B publishes that kind of paper or you’re in for another rejection.
Stay tuned - the next post will have some more common reasons for rejection. Have you noticed yet how little I've said about your actual research...?
I've had some great questions come in via Twitter and email - keep them coming and I'll do my best to answer.
-theAdmin
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