Choosing the Right Journal (The No. 1 Reason For Rejection)

Finally going to finish this series of the top reasons for rejection. The main reason we reject papers outright is extremely easy to avoid – the paper simply does not belong in the journal. You’ve chosen the wrong journal. It’s that simple.

theAdmin's face when we receive papers that don't belong

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Usually, the situation is one of the two scenarios below, though there are of course lots of exceptions:

The journal is a general research journal, and your paper deals with a topic that is far too specific for the journal’s audience.

This generally means that, for example, you are writing about the minutiae of a specific methodology  that a handful of people use in a small area of literature research, but you’ve submitted to the Interdisciplinary Journal of Eighteenth Century Studies. Unless you are able to make a very strong and concrete argument that would appeal to the wider audience, you’d be better off looking for the Journal of Literature Minutiae.

One of my favourite real life examples of this was when “my” journal received a submission with beautiful pictures and artwork of a regional variety of architecture. Don’t get me wrong, the pictures were very pretty, but the journal is not an architecture journal, nor does it specialise in the particular region. We’re also not an art journal and do not publish coloured photographs. Another was about the specifics of training for Turkish traffic enforcement – no relevancy whatsoever for what we actually publish.

The journal is a specialist journal and your paper deals with a topic that is far too general for the journal’s audience.

This would be the opposite of the above scenario – you submit something about the broad implications of Eighteenth Century literature to the Journal of Literature Minutiae without making the argument for relevancy at the micro level.

So, in other words, you most likely haven’t researched the journal’s audience and you haven’t gone through the Aims & Scope of the journal to find out what they are and- equally as important – are not looking to publish. This also applies to the internationalism versus regionalism of the journal.

How do you select  an appropriate journal and what should you be considering?

1) Have a look at the articles that you use in your research – in which journals do they appear? How long ago were they published and is that journal still following the same aims & scope? Journal practices change over time, especially with an editor or publisher change. {“my” journal, for example, has changed drastically due to a change in editor}

2) Really think about your audience. Who is your target? Theorists, practitioners, researchers, policy makers..? Who reads this journal and why?

3) Who is the editor? Also take a look through the editorial board – are they relevant and active?

4) Ask your supervisors, mentors, and peers for their opinions and advice. Supervisors are especially helpful in this area, as are academic mentors for those past the PhD stage.

5) Look for calls for papers – this will often be around special issues and special topics, so it’s worth keeping an eye out and signing up for announcement emails from publishers.

6) Is the journal international or just regional? Is this important?

7) Is it peer-reviewed? How long will this take?

8) Who publishes the journal?

9) What are the Open Access and repository policies? This is why it's important to know who actually publishes the journal.  How does this affect your options (grant requirements, etc.) ?

10) Is the journal ranked? Is this important to you? How does your discipline rank journals?

11) Is it available online and/or print? How important is each of these? Some publishing markets still heavily rely on print journals.

12) Impact Factor – does this make a difference?

13) If you’re still not sure if your paper fits, ASK THE EDITOR.

What if you find out you’ve been rejected for this reason?

Sometimes, if the editor is worthwhile, s/he will suggest another, more suitable journal for you to consider. It was theEditor’s practice to be as supportive as possible (again, all editors, journal policies, and publishers are different) in suggesting other avenues as it also works in the journal’s best interest and creates academic goodwill. The editors of those other journals tend to be appreciative of having good papers pointed in their direction.

 

Editors often comment on good papers sent their way - this is how I like to imagine it. gifphy.com

  

But if this is the reason you are rejected, then you need to do more research about where to submit. You might think your paper is very general, but if you’ve had tunnel-vision (often developed during PhD writing), then you might not realise how very specific your paper actually is. Take it as a positive to have a quick rejection due to this reason. It means you were trying the wrong places and can now target better.

Realistically, how long does it take an editor to determine if it’s a good fit or not?

Usually, a single read through. If that. I’ve seen it happen from the abstract or the first page. You need to start and demonstrate relevance rather quickly in articles. Waxing lyrical for a few pages is a massive disadvantage, especially if your paper is borderline of interest. Never underestimate the power of a good and concise abstract.

Sometimes, an editor will give you a chance to rewrite a paper to fit their journal's audience a bit better. If they offer you this option, then by all means take it - it means there is merit in your work and are willing to spend a bit of time in helping you avoid rejection.

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And there ends my series of the top reasons for rejection. (Click here for Parts I, II, and III). I'm going to be working on a series of smaller questions/FAQs for some future posts, as well as having a few guest posts on specific topics. If you have any questions, comments, or thoughts you'd like to contribute, please do get in touch. 

-theAdmin

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Reasons for Rejection (Part III)

Finally, some more reasons for rejection! Again, these have very little to do with the academic content of your paper. In fact reasons 4, 3, and 2 have one thing in common: following the guidelines. I'll do a separate post on the number one reason for rejection because it's a standalone post. 

So, what do I think are three of the top reasons that papers are rejected? It's pretty simple: you haven't followed our guidelines. Every journal posts "Instructions for Authors" of some sort. Follow them. Exactly. We don't write these guidelines for fun. In fact, they are quite carefully constructed and have reasons behind every seemingly bizarre thing we ask. (For example, sometimes we ask that tables be uploaded as separate documents to the main text. Why? Because the system we use imports them differently, and it's much easier for editing and typesetting). 

So, carrying on from Parts I and II, here are three more of the most common reasons for rejection:

4. DOES NOT FOLLOW GUIDELINES: Language Requirements

This specifically refers to grammar, style, punctuation, and academic language. Specifically, I'm referring to academic English, but journals in other languages will require the academic version of that language. Yes, this can be a disadvantage if English is not your first language, but more importantly, not everyone who speaks English has a command of grammar and academic English. Do not assume that you are an expert simply because it is your first language. Use a proofreader. This can be a colleague, a supervisor, or a professional proofreader. Importantly - please please please - make sure your proofreader knows how to proofread. Refer to my point about native speakers not automatically being experts.

For an idea of what is appropriate language, you should look at recent copies of the journal to which you wish to submit your paper. Does yours fit within its style? Is it formal enough language without being riddled with jargon? Some ECRs make the mistake of going too far with formal, academic English and submit papers that are nearly incomprehensible due to the amount of jargon. If you are unsure, have a colleague who is not in your specialty read through your paper. They should be able to follow even without specific subject knowledge (this may differ for science journals - if you are a science editor and wish to do a guest post, get in touch!). And stay away from contractions.

3. DOES NOT FOLLOW GUIDELINES: Word Length

Editors actually have some autonomy here, but stick to the word length as close as possible. Some journals won't even consider a paper that does not fit within their word limit (both the upper AND lower limits). Word lengths are important because they are used as a predictor of length. We have a specific page budget each year that we must meet. We can go a bit under (not advised), but we certainly can't go over. So by limiting the word count, we can predict the page length, keeping in mind that the pages of a Word document do not necessarily correlate to the pages in a journal. Aside from the actual length of papers, it lets us predict how many papers we will be able to publish per issue and per volume, as well as predict the size of our backlog.

It also keeps papers relatively uniform and encourages papers of the right kind. For example, in my discipline, there is a journal specifically dedicated to longer than average papers. If we get a paper that the author insists cannot be condensed (usually not true, but there are some studies where this applies), we recommend The Journal of Longer Papers. The lower limit of a word count helps to weed out things like book reviews, short pieces, opinion pieces, and papers that are not yet fully formed.

I frequently reject papers from my journal for not being within our limits, which is annoying because it's easy to avoid.

2. DOES NOT FOLLOW GUIDELINES: Not Blinded

This ranks as one of my top pet peeves of submitted papers. Make sure you read the policy of peer review. Usually, you will need to remove any identifying information from your paper. This means do not include a title page unless there is a way to upload one separately. Do not include your acknowledgements in the main text (either add these to a revision or the unblinded version you are asked to submit - if in doubt, ask the administrator or the editor). Do not include self-cites, especially if they give you away. It's perfectly acceptable to cite yourself as (Author, 2005), for example. Do not include contact details on the submission. Do not include your institution. If you have a study that you conducted at your institution, anonymise it in the text and edit it at the proofs stage (tip: don't forget what you've anonymised. Keep a non-anonymised version. We require you to submit this as a separate file so that our proofreaders and copy-editors can compare the two).

All of your details will be attached as metadata for the correct people to see when you submit through an online portal. Not all journals operate double blind review, but I'm a fervent believer in it. In fact, I just read a great post on it in the sciences: http://www.nature.com/news/journals-weigh-up-double-blind-peer-review-1.15564.

Follow the guidelines on blinding/anonymisation. Papers are rejected pretty quickly for this in order for you to rectify and resubmit. I've had a few emails over the years that obviously haven't followed my advice on contacting a journal and have been very patronising and rude, saying I should just anonymise their papers for them because it's such a small thing.It is indeed a small thing for the author (who doesn't have dozens of active papers at a single time).

That's all for now - next will be my post on the main reason for rejection: Choosing the wrong journal. And shortly thereafter, I'll have my first guest post.

Questions, comments, and suggestions always welcome. Email,Tweet to @ECRPublishing , or comment below.

-theAdmin

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What To Do When You Are Rejected

(a break from my Reasons for Rejection series, which I'll get around to finishing soon, promise)

Notice I didn’t say “if” you are rejected? It’s just part of academic life, especially at the early  career stage. Yes, there are the few academics out there who have never had anything rejected, but expecting to be one of these academics is a pipe dream. I know that’s harsh, but the “publish or perish” environment means we get an awful lot of submissions despite our number of pages not increasing.

So, what should you do when you are rejected? In my experience, the following should prove useful. Have you found anything particularly useful in dealing with rejection? Let me know. For further reading, Pat Thomson (@ThomsonPat) has some great blog articles available here: https://patthomson.wordpress.com/category/rejection/.

1.) First and foremost – CALM DOWN.

Take a deep breath. It’s very easy to get upset when you receive that email. Let yourself be upset for a little bit, it’s OK. Better to get it out of your system.

Other ECRs are an important support group

 

2.) Accept that the comments and the decision are not personal.

This is not a personal commentary on you or your academic abilities.

3.) Read the comments. Re-read them. Read them again. And when you’re finished, go away for a bit and then read them again later. 

This should be you

Why? Because it’s easy to misconstrue the comments and suggestions. Reviewers, in general, are very constructive. Editors also want to help. Not all comments will be constructive, but it’s quite rare to get nothing helpful back, even on the rare occasion that it's done poorly and harshly.

 

4.) Make sure you understand the comments

WHAT are the reviewers and/or editors trying to tell you about your paper? Have you been rejected because your word count is over, or have you been rejected because you haven’t used a coherent structure?

WHY have they told you this? Usually a reviewer will give justification for modifications.

HOW do they suggest you rectify any issues with your paper?

5.) Remember that reviewer evaluations are honest evaluations.

They tend to be honest. Use them constructively. A reviewer isn’t getting paid to write all those comments about how you can improve your paper. The editor probably isn’t getting paid much (if anything), so if they invest time in your paper to make comments, do them the courtesy of respecting that it’s an honest evaluation. The anonymity of the double-blind system really helps with this. 

That moment when you realise that you agree with the reviewers

 

6.) Consider whether it’s in your best interest to rewrite your paper.

You don’t have to take all the suggestions on board. You are free to disagree with them. Once a decision is made on your paper, it is “released” (see my post on multiple submissions), and you are free to submit to another journal. It might fit better somewhere else. But make sure you’ve addressed any fundamental issues that have been identified, or those issues will affect future submissions.

7.) Last, but certainly not least, LEARN from the process.

Remember that just about all academics will be rejected at some point. It is not unusual, and journals prefer to have a high rejection rate. Learn from the process and from the reviewers’ and editors’ comments in order to better your chances in the future.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Comment below, or keep the emails and tweets coming.

-theAdmin

Reasons for Rejection (Part II)

Apologies for the delay in posting - and for the relative brevity in this post - it's been a busy few weeks. I've had some interesting discussions from my last post; it's been great to hear from other editors and administrators with regard to what they find to be the most common reasons for rejection.

That being said, I'd just like to reiterate that these are simply from my experience and viewpoint, as well as discussions with our publisher from a previous event.

So, without further ado, some more things to think about:

7. Your paper has a very poor theoretical framework, including references to relevant literature.

There’s a thing that most referees and reviewers do when they pick up a new article or book – they flip straight to the bibliography and see what the sources are. If any of the major works are missing, there are audible grumbles. It’s like trying to explain the Mr Men and omitting Mr Happy. It just doesn’t help you.

Your paper should, ideally, place itself within the framework of the literature pretty quickly. This is the so what, who cares? question that you need to be addressing. A journal article is much shorter than a dissertation, thesis, and monograph; therefore, you need to include the relevant literature and build the framework quickly. Don’t dither and leave it to page 8 or you will have lost not only the administrator, but also the editor and any potential referees. Papers where the reader has to do a lot of work are hard to get reviewed so suffer from the things I discuss in this post.

Reviewers will suggest important works that may have been omitted for whatever reason. The point is, pay attention to the pivotal relevant literature. Don’t add references just because, but make sure you are engaging with the existing field.

Publications are part of the ongoing scholarly discussion of academia. Like any discussion worth having, you can’t just say what you want to say in total isolation. It must link to what has already been said and what is likely to be said in the future.

6. You haven’t contextualised your paper and considered your audience.

Just to reiterate a mantra: each journal is different. This includes each journal having a different audience. Some journals are aimed at academics; some are aimed at practitioners. Some are even aimed at postgraduate students, and some are aimed at industry. Know which audience the journal you are submitting to addresses. This is the why are you telling me? part. Don’t submit a paper aimed at academic theorists to a practitioner-targeted journal unless you make an exceptionally well contextualised argument. Even then, the editor is likely to reject your paper and suggest you submit to an academic theory-based journal.

Editors have to look for papers that their readership will not only be interested in reading but also likely to engage with and cite in further papers. Your best chance of success is to be what the editor is looking for.

5. Your paper doesn’t add to the discussion or states the obvious at tedious length

A somewhat obvious biggie. By this, I simply mean you haven’t said anything new; you haven’t added your voice to the scholarly discussion. And yes, even literature reviews must add something new. Don’t submit the worst kind of “literature review” – one that is simply a glorified listing of relevant literature with no analysis. The analysis is the new, and essential, part.

Sometimes though, regardless of whether or not something new is stated, papers are tedious and do nothing but state the obvious. It’s very, very difficult to get a reviewer to look at an exceptionally long paper, especially if it can be summed up in a much shorter paper. To be honest, I’ve seen submissions where I’ve read a few pages and in the back of my mind all I can hear is “Round and round she goes, and where she stops nobody knows” (That’s a line from The Original Amateur Hour for you kiddies out there). 

And that's all for now, folks. I'll have to add the next post when I get a chance. Maybe the Spring/Easter break will afford some time. Maybe not. 

As always, questions/queries/comments/suggestions are always welcome either via Twitter, Email, or below.

-theAdmin 

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Reasons for Rejection (Part I)

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?:

1. “Of course his/her research would find that outcome though, s/he’s a racist/sexist/biased pig”

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.

2. Unethical papers are fairly straightforward. If it doesn’t adhere to a journal’s ethics guidelines, then we won’t consider it. We have to be sure that we’re not going to be targeted for publishing something that didn’t receive ethics board approval. Read the journal’s requirements regarding ethics board approval and follow them exactly. This is one area that journal editors will NOT compromise, bend, or make exceptions for early career researchers. Doing so compromises the integrity of the journal, the editor’s entire editorship, and the validity of every other paper published.

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