My Paper has been Rejected!
Every author gets rejected, Don’t despair!
- Was your paper rejected very quickly after submission?
- Subject not appropriate or timely for the journal
- Author instructions were not not followed (paper not formatted correctly), English not sufficient for review, incomplete components
- Abbreviations and acronyms = alphabet soup; make sure terminology is clear
- Tracked changes, edits, comments between authors have not been removed before submission – submit a clean copy!
- Figures, tables not formatted as instructed
- Was your paper rejected after the peer-review process?
- Consider objectively any reviewer/editor comments you did receive and revise accordingly, even before submitting to a different journal
- Reformat before you submit elsewhere!
- If the paper is formatted for Journal A, read the instructions for formatting for Journal B! The editorial office of Journal B will know immediately that your manuscript was formatted for another journal, was likely rejected there, and that may raise questions about its suitability.
Interesting Perspectives
There are a number of articles and blogs online explaining why health science manuscripts are rejected. Most report the same general reasons. Here’s an article from 2014, by a health science editor at Elsevier. If this doesn’t convince you that following a journal’s instructions are important, nothing will.
Another Elsevier editor had this to say in 2012: https://www.elsevier.com/connect/8-reasons-i-rejected-your-article
From Research Medics: https://researchmedics.com/top-ten-reasons-papers-get-rejected/
Finally, some interesting opinions on ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_are_the_most_popular_reasons_editors_usually_reject_your_paper_for