Many authors are unsure the process of how academic journals work and how the process of manuscript submission to a journal proceeds, or how an editor thinks. Here a quick bit of information.

Rule 1 – best not to contact the journal editor for an update on your paper status. Only if it has been a really long time (maybe like 2 months). The editor is really busy, and you don’t want to get them upset. The world is not your oyster.

Rule 2 – you might think acceptance of your paper is all up to the reviewers – not true. The editors make the final decision. They click the button to accept or reject. So best to be respectful.

Rule 3 – when submitting a manuscript, don’t take any shortcuts or leave anything out. It looks sloppy. Like, don’t leave out any of the coauthors on the title page when the submission process asks. Don’t leave out your academic address when the submission process asks. Answer all questions completely during the submission process. Remember to write a letter to the editor for the journal you are submitting to.

Rule 4 – whatever you do, don’t leave markers of a prior submission to another journal in your submitted manuscript, like, Dear XYZ (editor of prior journal from a prior submission) or the name of the other journal ('We’re submitting to journal ABC.' Wrong!), or your IEEE status for a non-IEEE journal.

Rule 5 – address all reviewer queries one by one. Make some changes as requested, and state where they are in the manuscript. Mark in the text (highlight copy). Don’t leave anything unanswered. Make substantiative changes. If you can’t do something the reviewer requests, state why. Be polite. Never be argumentative.

Rule 6 – On revision, only include latest highlight and plain copy in submission. Do not include old versions of the manuscript or old letter or old anything else. It can confuse the reviewers and the editor and waste their time. Reject! If by some chance your paper is accepted like that, the dopy typesetter may publish an old version from your many versions included in the last submission!

Rule 7 – if your manuscript is rejected, don’t complain. Either don’t go back to that journal, or try try again with some other work when you complete it. Even if you had a paper accepted there before, doesn’t mean your new paper will be accepted or even reviewed. Reviews take the time of the expert reviewers. The wise editor will only have a paper reviewed, or re-reviewed, if it seems to have a good chance of meeting the journal's standards - and as a result, reviewers will be happy to review for the journal.

Rule 8 – don’t be discouraged if your manuscript is rejected. Editors make mistakes. Your work may be excellent, it just takes another journal editor to recognize it. Or, it may take many reviews and many rejections at many journals and many rewrites before the manuscript becomes excellent. Happened to me.

Rule 9 – get your revision done promptly if possible. Don’t pester the editor for more time if at all possible. Editors have limited time, and changing a due date is a real time waster for them. They will remember when it comes to checking the accept or reject box! Have consideration and get your work done on deadline.

Rule 10 – check if the journal has a fee (APC) beforehand. Look for it yourself on the website. Don’t waste the editor’s time by asking them. If you have to ask how much the fee is, you can’t afford it! Go to a free journal.

Rule 11 – similarly, don’t ask if a journal is fully indexed. You should be able to determine that yourself. Even if it is not fully indexed yet, it may already be a mainstream journal that many authors send their work to. Support the journal as it goes for full indexing.

Rule 12 - “presubmission inquiry” – this new phenomenon and terminology is never a good idea. Sorry to inform you, this is not LaLa Land. The editor does not have time to provide a personal in-depth analysis, performance estimate, or summary review for the inquirer. You are not special! If that paper gets submitted to the journal - Reject! Only in the case of an editor’s colleagues and coworkers, who sometimes feel that they should send a preinquiry, with justification, to stave off conflicts of interest.

Rule 13 – don’t use impact factor as the only guide as to where to submit your article. Other factors are important, like, is the journal becoming more prestigious. Here a place where you can find that out. Add a journal name and scroll down to the graphs. Are the trends up or down? https://www.scimagojr.com/

Rule 14 – don’t try to cozy up to the editor and become their friend. They know what you are doing and they don’t like it. Reject!

Rule 15 – suggest reviewers if you like, but don’t think they will automatically be used. First of all, only use the reviewer’s academic email address, not gmail or anything else. But, editor may not even feel like using suggestions, or may not need them. And if they try, most often the suggested reviewer says no – either too busy or they don’t realize authors of paper they are being asked to review.

Rule 16 – if you don’t have the money for the APC fee, don’t agree to it and hope you will have the money to pay for it later. Doesn’t happen. Collection agents will call your workplace, even from overseas! Bank on it! Happened to me.

Rule 17 – paper must have good English. Use an English language service or if your university has an English language office if needed. Papers with poor grammar rarely get reviewed, let alone accepted. Otherwise, send your paper to a journal in your own language. Gotta do it. You think it's not fair that the English should be perfect? Too bad! Next!

Rule 18 – paper must be well written. Add senior authors who know how to write a paper if helpful. Do everything they tell you. It may take many revisions and months but you get a solid paper.

Rule 19 – hyperlinks are being used more often now in the text of the manuscript and even in the references. Every link better work. An editor finds broken links? Fail!

Rule 20 – check your paper for spelling. Every word must be perfect before submitting your manuscript. A spell check takes a few minutes. Do it!

Rule 21 – get your citations in order. Too lazy to fix it? The editor will think so. If you are doing references manually and you get something out of order and have to reorder everything, or in a revision need to add, tough. That’s life. Get it right.

Rule 22 – don’t complain that somebody published something out from under you. Get your work done. If you give a presentation at a meeting, let your work sit around for 2 years and then somebody else has published it – too bad! Life is unfair. A personal pity party won’t help.

Rule 23 - don't think the editor is discriminating against you on the basis of your country if you get a reject. Any editor worth their salt is considering the impact of the paper, not where it is from. If an editor starts rejecting papers on the basis of country, they are going to miss good papers, their journal goes downhill, and no more editor. So don't think 'poor little me' and believe that your country or your name is the reason for the rejection. More like, you need to improve your papers!

Rule 24 - don't expect special treatment on your submission if you review for the journal. There is a Latin phrase for that, it is quid pro quo. It would compromise the review process.

Rule 25 - if your manuscript does pass initial screening and is reviewed, in a perfect world, there would be maybe 2 or 3 reviewers, they would all hand their reviews in on time and they would all heartily agree on the fate of the submission. Wrong! Almost never happens. Reviewers are often late, sometimes they never even hand anything in (maybe they ask for another week and still turn nothing in), and some may say accept while others say reject. They can also get huffy if the editor doesn't do what they say. To make sure there are sufficient reviewers, and if there is a lot if interest, you might get 4 or 5 reviews. If there is less expertise or people are busy you sometimes only get 1 review - even a great paper. That's just the way it is. Some things will never change.

Rule 26 - Citations need to be in perfect form. Do not have some et al. and some full set of authors, unless that is the journal style. Do not show some cites in the text as numbers and others as author names. Sloppy! References should be in the journal style. Too lazy to do it? Fine! You can publish in low-level journals for the rest of your life!

Rule 27 – many authors have some notion of how their paper is screened being like the old days – the editor and editorial board are sitting around a huge conference table all day, studying stacks of submitted manuscripts in paper form, smoking pipes (at least the guys) and drinking tea and coffee, spending an hour or more discussing the merits of each submission, and then voting on it with a roll call. Wrong! The screening process consists of the editor taking a quick look at the paper, maybe on a tiny laptop, reading the Abstract and some of the content, checking for plagiarism, perhaps studying prior submissions by the authors and their outcomes. A seasoned editor can do that in 3 minutes and thereupon make a decision to send for review or to desk-reject. If the system is set up correctly, the editor receives an email assignment of the manuscript immediately after it is submitted, and if they’re not too busy, they may look at it then and there. So don’t be too surprised if your submission comes back with desk-reject less than 5 minutes after you submit it. It means the editor is on top of things!

Rule 28 – you might think that every manuscript submitted to a journal gets a review. Nope! At the best journals, it may be like 1 in 10. They get 5000 submissions per year. It would be virtually impossible and not fair to reviewers to ask them to review 10x their current workload just for one journal. So the wise editor limits reviews to those manuscripts with a fighting chance of being accepted. Everything else gets a desk-reject.

Rule 29 – if you don’t hear anything in 24 – 48 hours after submission, even for slow journals, it probably means that your work has passed the initial screening and is going to review. That’s good! The editor thinks the manuscript might have merit for their journal. But it’s only a first hurdle passed.

Rule 30 – if your submission comes back after review with request for revision, huge! It means the editor wants to publish it! Don’t blow it! Make sure that you do everything the reviewers ask as much as possible! Take the time to do it. Make the manuscript perfect! And often, it will then be accepted.

Rule 31 – if your submission comes back with suggestion for de novo submission, that’s still pretty good. It means the editor finds merit with the submission, but not all reviewers are on board, and / or there is a major amount of work yet to do. If you are willing to take the time to fix everything that they mention, you can resubmit a de novo version and probably get your work accepted.