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“Why did my paper get rejected?” Recent conversations with researcher friends made me realize that academic journal/editorial decision making can feel very opaque. To shed some light, here’s a rough outline of how journals make decisions about the papers you submit. /1
(Tweets my own, not any journal’s.) After a paper is submitted, an editor takes a first look at the paper. This could be the Editor-in-chief or an Associate Editor. They are looking to see if the paper has any chance of getting published in that journal. /2
If the paper has fatally flawed methods/is off topic/is clearly not of interest, it will be immediately rejected. The question at this step is “Even if reviewers said great things, would I still reject the paper?” If yes, the paper will not be sent out for review. /3
Once reviews are back, the handling editor looks for 1) methodological problems, 2) whether those concerns are fixable or fatal, 3) whether reviewers think the paper really adds knowledge to the field or just confirms what is already known, and 4) any ethical or other issues. /4
Serious, unfixable methodological problems are a clear cause for rejection, as is lack of reviewer interest in the topic. Otherwise what happens next depends on the selectivity of the journal. Some journals take any paper with solid methods and the decision would be Revise. /5
Most journals receive more papers than they can publish and must make decisions about which papers with good reviews they should take. Considerations: 1) How much work do the authors have to do to fix the methodological issues raised, and does the editor think they can do it? /6
2) How much does the work add to what we already know? (Reviewers are particularly helpful here. This is why we send things out for review if we are on the fence about a paper: sometimes the reviewers convince us, and we are giving your paper a chance.) /7
3) Will the paper change clinical practice/be very useful to researchers/etc depending on the mission of journal. Some journals I’ve worked at have a clear rubric: “This paper needs to affect practice for generalist readers”, for example. /8
Because the methods and “how much this paper adds” are separate metrics, journals are often forced to reject papers with solid methods. The available papers are basically graded on a curve, and the journal can only take the top 10-15 articles each week (or 25 per month etc). /9
If a paper with solid methods adds less than 10 other papers with solid methods available that week, it will be rejected. (Does that mean in a week with only 9 better papers it would be sent for revision? Yes.) /10
Being an editor is not just about reading papers, but about having a feel for what moves a field forward. Two things we all know: we can’t publish every paper we want to, but good papers will always find a home somewhere. /11
