-: So, we're going to look at an article called,
Eight Reasons I Rejected Your Article, by Dr. Peter Thrower,
who's the editor-in-chief of Carbon,
the journal called Carbon.
Okay, so the first reason that your article may be rejected
is if it fails the technical screening.
Okay, so this would be rejected before review,
and here are some reasons
why it might fail that technical screening:
If there's a suspicion of plagiarism,
then that's an ethical violation;
they would not publish that paper.
If it's under review at another journal at the same time
that you've submitted it to this journal,
that's a violation of their policies.
If it's incomplete, in other words,
you didn't submit all of the parts that are required;
you left out a component that's required
for a complete article.
If the English language is not sufficient,
that's a reason to reject it at that point.
If there are problems with the figures,
if it does not follow the guide for authors,
okay, and this is something we're going
to talk about quite a bit,
is following the instructions for each journal,
and if the references are incomplete or they're too old;
okay, this is an indication
that you haven't learned your field very well,
and your paper is probably not
at the most current version it could be.
So, that's the first reason.
The second reason is, it does not fall
within the aims and scope, so in other words,
this is not the appropriate journal for this research,
and it could be rejected right then.
So, we'll talk about how to select appropriate journals
for your research.
The third reason would be that it's incomplete.
So this is different than the technically incomplete,
this is that the study itself or the analysis
or the writing up of the study is not complete,
so it's not a full study, so they haven't done all
of the research that needs to be done to make it,
to cover all the aspects that need to be covered,
or it ignores important work, so maybe there's some work
in your field that is contradictory to your findings,
well, you can't just ignore that, you have to also explain
why your findings are different than the other findings.
So if you just ignore that other work,
pretend like it doesn't exist,
that's not going to be appropriate.
The fourth reason is that the procedures and/or the analysis
of the data is seen to be defective.
So this is one of the answers we got a few minutes ago.
Maybe it lacked clear controls,
or it did not conform to the recognized procedures,
or it didn't use methodology that could be repeated,
so all of those might apply to the guppy study.
The analysis is not statistically valid
or it does not follow the norms of the field,
so whatever field you work in,
however your field typically uses statistics,
you should follow that in your article.
Okay, a fifth reason would be
that the conclusions cannot be justified
on the basis of the rest of the paper,
so maybe the authors wrote it up with arguments
that are not logical, they're illogical,
or the arguments are unstructured,
it's just all over the place, or they're not even valid,
it's a misinterpretation of the data.
Another reason under that fifth reason is
that the data does not support the conclusions, or again,
the conclusions ignore large parts of the literature.
Okay, the sixth reason is,
this is similar to being incomplete, an incomplete study,
this is simply a small extension of a different paper,
often from the same authors, and so,
it's really just not enough work to be publishable.
The findings are incremental,
they only advance the field a small amount,
not a meaningful amount,
and they don't advance the field,
or the work is clearly part of a larger study,
that the authors have tried to chop up
into multiple articles, so you might have heard the term,
least publishable units, before,
so in this case they tried to cut the units too small
and it's just not a full study.
Number seven: it's incomprehensible.
So, the reviewers, the editor,
they just don't understand what it's about,
so maybe the structure of the paper doesn't flow well,
maybe if it were restructured and told in a logical way,
it would make sense, or it could be problems
with the language.
It's hard to say why, but they just don't know
what you're talking about, so it's incomprehensible,
or the eighth reason, and this is one that can be fixed,
perhaps, it's just boring to the reviewers, to the editor.
So, why would it be boring?
It could be the type of work it is,
maybe it's just archival, so it's just a set of data
that hasn't really been analyzed
in a way to generate interest to the field;
it's of marginal interest to the field,
or, as we said before, it's just a very small advance.
Perhaps the question behind the work is really not
of interest to the field, so that makes it boring, you know,
they just don't care about this topic,
it's not considered to be important,
or the work is not of interest to the readers
of the specific journal,
so maybe you should choose a different journal.
Maybe if you put it in the right journal,
it wouldn't be boring to those readers,
but it is boring to the readers of this journal.
So, those are all possibilities
of why your article was rejected.
Okay, so let's talk about the opposite now.
These are eight reasons I accepted your article,
and this is from Elizabeth Zwaaf,
a marketing communications specialist
at this major publisher.
So, the first reason is, it provides insight
into an important issue, so when you're writing your paper,
think about that.
How can I write this so that it's clear to my readers
that I'm providing new insight into this important issue.
The insight is useful to people who make decisions,
so maybe your target audience could include policy makers,
or practitioners, or producers of some sort,
people who make decisions,
and you're providing some practically useful information.
Another powerful thing you can do is, take your results
and provide insight to develop a new framework
or a new theory, a new way of understanding the topic
that you are writing about,
so if you can develop a model
or a new framework, this is very powerful,
and number four follows directly from number three.
If you develop a new framework or theory,
this should stimulate new and important questions,
so your work not only answers some questions,
but it's also stimulating new questions.
This makes it more acceptable to the journals.
Okay, the fifth reason is that the methods used
to explore the issue are appropriate, okay,
so you've used all the right methods
to answer those questions,
and they're applied rigorously
and they explain the why and the how that the data
that you've generated support your conclusions,
so you've tied it all together very well.
Number seven is important, too.
We talked about a reason to reject was
that the references were not complete.
Well, in number seven, the connections to prior work
in the field are made, so you've made the connections
to previous work in the field,
shown how your results relate to those,
or if you're in an interdisciplinary field,
you can make connections to work from other fields, also.
So that's very powerful, if you can show
how your work relates in your field.
And number eight, the article tells a good story,
and so, this is the opposite of boring.
It's telling a good story.
So, what do we mean by that?