Writing for Publication: Part 2

Office of Graduate Studies Author

12/22/2016 Added

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Part 2 of an 8-part Writing for Publication workshop presented by Dr. Brian Waters

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[00:00:02.734]So, we're going to look at an article called,
[00:00:06.037]Eight Reasons I Rejected Your Article, by Dr. Peter Thrower,
[00:00:10.444]who's the editor-in-chief of Carbon,
[00:00:13.464]the journal called Carbon.
[00:00:16.077]Okay, so the first reason that your article may be rejected
[00:00:21.032]is if it fails the technical screening.
[00:00:24.175]Okay, so this would be rejected before review,
[00:00:28.720]and here are some reasons
[00:00:29.688]why it might fail that technical screening:
[00:00:32.267]If there's a suspicion of plagiarism,
[00:00:35.518]then that's an ethical violation;
[00:00:37.508]they would not publish that paper.
[00:00:40.467]If it's under review at another journal at the same time
[00:00:43.901]that you've submitted it to this journal,
[00:00:46.429]that's a violation of their policies.
[00:00:49.424]If it's incomplete, in other words,
[00:00:51.606]you didn't submit all of the parts that are required;
[00:00:54.989]you left out a component that's required
[00:00:57.728]for a complete article.
[00:01:00.760]If the English language is not sufficient,
[00:01:03.523]that's a reason to reject it at that point.
[00:01:08.179]If there are problems with the figures,
[00:01:11.236]if it does not follow the guide for authors,
[00:01:14.027]okay, and this is something we're going
[00:01:15.196]to talk about quite a bit,
[00:01:17.108]is following the instructions for each journal,
[00:01:20.367]and if the references are incomplete or they're too old;
[00:01:24.770]okay, this is an indication
[00:01:26.077]that you haven't learned your field very well,
[00:01:30.160]and your paper is probably not
[00:01:34.367]at the most current version it could be.
[00:01:37.484]So, that's the first reason.
[00:01:38.848]The second reason is, it does not fall
[00:01:41.518]within the aims and scope, so in other words,
[00:01:44.840]this is not the appropriate journal for this research,
[00:01:48.498]and it could be rejected right then.
[00:01:50.876]So, we'll talk about how to select appropriate journals
[00:01:54.237]for your research.
[00:01:56.841]The third reason would be that it's incomplete.
[00:02:01.702]So this is different than the technically incomplete,
[00:02:04.558]this is that the study itself or the analysis
[00:02:08.182]or the writing up of the study is not complete,
[00:02:10.792]so it's not a full study, so they haven't done all
[00:02:15.782]of the research that needs to be done to make it,
[00:02:20.969]to cover all the aspects that need to be covered,
[00:02:24.196]or it ignores important work, so maybe there's some work
[00:02:28.808]in your field that is contradictory to your findings,
[00:02:33.800]well, you can't just ignore that, you have to also explain
[00:02:39.118]why your findings are different than the other findings.
[00:02:42.299]So if you just ignore that other work,
[00:02:44.636]pretend like it doesn't exist,
[00:02:46.603]that's not going to be appropriate.
[00:02:49.841]The fourth reason is that the procedures and/or the analysis
[00:02:55.302]of the data is seen to be defective.
[00:02:58.806]So this is one of the answers we got a few minutes ago.
[00:03:03.099]Maybe it lacked clear controls,
[00:03:05.996]or it did not conform to the recognized procedures,
[00:03:09.947]or it didn't use methodology that could be repeated,
[00:03:13.463]so all of those might apply to the guppy study.
[00:03:17.712]The analysis is not statistically valid
[00:03:21.378]or it does not follow the norms of the field,
[00:03:23.938]so whatever field you work in,
[00:03:25.462]however your field typically uses statistics,
[00:03:29.659]you should follow that in your article.
[00:03:33.255]Okay, a fifth reason would be
[00:03:35.885]that the conclusions cannot be justified
[00:03:39.324]on the basis of the rest of the paper,
[00:03:42.355]so maybe the authors wrote it up with arguments
[00:03:47.872]that are not logical, they're illogical,
[00:03:51.041]or the arguments are unstructured,
[00:03:54.943]it's just all over the place, or they're not even valid,
[00:03:59.230]it's a misinterpretation of the data.
[00:04:05.011]Another reason under that fifth reason is
[00:04:07.214]that the data does not support the conclusions, or again,
[00:04:11.080]the conclusions ignore large parts of the literature.
[00:04:15.562]Okay, the sixth reason is,
[00:04:20.244]this is similar to being incomplete, an incomplete study,
[00:04:24.359]this is simply a small extension of a different paper,
[00:04:28.249]often from the same authors, and so,
[00:04:30.788]it's really just not enough work to be publishable.
[00:04:34.835]The findings are incremental,
[00:04:36.924]they only advance the field a small amount,
[00:04:40.085]not a meaningful amount,
[00:04:44.175]and they don't advance the field,
[00:04:46.560]or the work is clearly part of a larger study,
[00:04:49.884]that the authors have tried to chop up
[00:04:51.904]into multiple articles, so you might have heard the term,
[00:04:56.171]least publishable units, before,
[00:04:59.747]so in this case they tried to cut the units too small
[00:05:03.720]and it's just not a full study.
[00:05:08.292]Number seven: it's incomprehensible.
[00:05:12.791]So, the reviewers, the editor,
[00:05:14.935]they just don't understand what it's about,
[00:05:18.343]so maybe the structure of the paper doesn't flow well,
[00:05:22.665]maybe if it were restructured and told in a logical way,
[00:05:26.078]it would make sense, or it could be problems
[00:05:28.532]with the language.
[00:05:30.487]It's hard to say why, but they just don't know
[00:05:34.143]what you're talking about, so it's incomprehensible,
[00:05:37.732]or the eighth reason, and this is one that can be fixed,
[00:05:43.340]perhaps, it's just boring to the reviewers, to the editor.
[00:05:50.189]So, why would it be boring?
[00:05:53.324]It could be the type of work it is,
[00:05:56.189]maybe it's just archival, so it's just a set of data
[00:06:00.659]that hasn't really been analyzed
[00:06:02.353]in a way to generate interest to the field;
[00:06:05.596]it's of marginal interest to the field,
[00:06:07.892]or, as we said before, it's just a very small advance.
[00:06:14.576]Perhaps the question behind the work is really not
[00:06:17.415]of interest to the field, so that makes it boring, you know,
[00:06:21.696]they just don't care about this topic,
[00:06:24.123]it's not considered to be important,
[00:06:27.266]or the work is not of interest to the readers
[00:06:29.968]of the specific journal,
[00:06:32.561]so maybe you should choose a different journal.
[00:06:37.046]Maybe if you put it in the right journal,
[00:06:38.791]it wouldn't be boring to those readers,
[00:06:41.243]but it is boring to the readers of this journal.
[00:06:44.495]So, those are all possibilities
[00:06:46.709]of why your article was rejected.
[00:06:52.142]Okay, so let's talk about the opposite now.
[00:06:55.974]These are eight reasons I accepted your article,
[00:06:59.528]and this is from Elizabeth Zwaaf,
[00:07:01.441]a marketing communications specialist
[00:07:04.550]at this major publisher.
[00:07:07.339]So, the first reason is, it provides insight
[00:07:10.767]into an important issue, so when you're writing your paper,
[00:07:15.402]think about that.
[00:07:16.235]How can I write this so that it's clear to my readers
[00:07:21.595]that I'm providing new insight into this important issue.
[00:07:26.117]The insight is useful to people who make decisions,
[00:07:29.560]so maybe your target audience could include policy makers,
[00:07:34.477]or practitioners, or producers of some sort,
[00:07:39.678]people who make decisions,
[00:07:40.857]and you're providing some practically useful information.
[00:07:46.221]Another powerful thing you can do is, take your results
[00:07:51.666]and provide insight to develop a new framework
[00:07:54.622]or a new theory, a new way of understanding the topic
[00:07:58.626]that you are writing about,
[00:08:02.325]so if you can develop a model
[00:08:04.594]or a new framework, this is very powerful,
[00:08:08.489]and number four follows directly from number three.
[00:08:13.751]If you develop a new framework or theory,
[00:08:16.363]this should stimulate new and important questions,
[00:08:19.492]so your work not only answers some questions,
[00:08:22.946]but it's also stimulating new questions.
[00:08:25.954]This makes it more acceptable to the journals.
[00:08:32.348]Okay, the fifth reason is that the methods used
[00:08:37.128]to explore the issue are appropriate, okay,
[00:08:39.786]so you've used all the right methods
[00:08:42.622]to answer those questions,
[00:08:47.609]and they're applied rigorously
[00:08:50.027]and they explain the why and the how that the data
[00:08:54.291]that you've generated support your conclusions,
[00:08:57.414]so you've tied it all together very well.
[00:09:03.234]Number seven is important, too.
[00:09:06.073]We talked about a reason to reject was
[00:09:08.597]that the references were not complete.
[00:09:12.246]Well, in number seven, the connections to prior work
[00:09:14.895]in the field are made, so you've made the connections
[00:09:18.614]to previous work in the field,
[00:09:20.669]shown how your results relate to those,
[00:09:24.103]or if you're in an interdisciplinary field,
[00:09:27.229]you can make connections to work from other fields, also.
[00:09:31.712]So that's very powerful, if you can show
[00:09:34.154]how your work relates in your field.
[00:09:37.808]And number eight, the article tells a good story,
[00:09:41.689]and so, this is the opposite of boring.
[00:09:43.822]It's telling a good story.
[00:09:46.629]So, what do we mean by that?

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Writing for Publication: Part 2

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