It strongly depends on a journal but one obvious situation ripe for rejection is if the reviewer finds an error that cannot be fixed by the authors within a reasonable amount of time.

In my opinion the decision depends on two main ingredients: the paper itself and the quality of the journal. In general lines, Dr. Abushouk described the points that an editor, and as consequence, the journal, should consider in order to reach a decision about the manuscript submitted. On the other hand, as mentioned by Dr. Sergyeyev, this decision also depends on the journal. A well established and major journal, take Nature or one of the top 5 journals in your field as examples, may reject very good papers, which may be perfectly acceptable in good journals.

Here you can find some instructions/observations from a respectable journal about the points you asked about: http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/for-reviewers#question3

'Eight reasons I rejected your article'

A journal editor reveals the top reasons so many manuscripts don’t make it to the peer review process

When a manuscript is submitted to a high-quality scholarly journal, it goes through intense scrutiny — even before it's seen by the editor-in-chief and selected for peer review. At Elsevier, between 30 percent to 50 percent of articles don't even make it to the peer review process.

Eight reasons of paper rejection are:

1. It fails the technical screening.

2. It does not fall within the Aims and Scope.

3. It's incomplete.

4. The procedures and/or analysis of the data is seen to be defective.

5. The conclusions cannot be justified on the basis of the rest of the paper.

6. It's simply a small extension of a different paper, often from the same authors.

7. It's incomprehensible.

8. It's boring.

https://www.elsevier.com/connect/8-reasons-i-rejected-your-article

Adding to Subhash C. Kundu reasons

9) Flaws in peer review process.

10)Incompetent Reviewer

As a Peer Reviewer: When you should say Rejected Manuscript?

You can also refer to the following RG link:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/In_your_opinion_experience_what_are_main_reasons_of_rejecting_a_manuscript_by_international_journal_reviewers

When a paper is ambiguous with its sections in conflict, blurring understanding.

When a paper's methodology that shows how the research was conducted is not consistent with the findings and discussions.

When a paper is outside the scope and aims of the journal.

When the work is badly bad

Useful link:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/In_your_opinion_experience_what_are_main_reasons_of_rejecting_a_manuscript_by_international_journal_reviewers

I did not suggest rejection of a manuscript based on the first review unless:

(1) It is clearly not original, or

(2) It contains severe errors, or

(3) Its content is irrelevant to the journal scope.

Otherwise, I provide sufficient feedback to the authors for enhancing and/or correcting their manuscript.

Hi,

Usually, the first editorial consideration is if the paper is in the aims and scope of the journal. If the editor thinks it is not, he could reject it without even sending it to referees. Accepting an article depends on its value, how much it adds knowledge to the field, and to what extent it follows journal's "instructions for authors". An article is accepted with minor revisions usually when there is a missing citation, or if there are language problems, or if the communicative way of transferring ideas is not clear. Major revisions are required if the general idea of the paper is novel, but the presentation needs a lot of revisions. A complete rejection after reviewers examination is when the paper is definitely below the accepted scientific level of the journal.

Most of the time manuscript is rejected when the editor does not find reputed co-author in the manuscript. I have seen so much rubbish(repeating) work being published by Elsevier and Springer just because the manuscript is co-authored by the reputed author.

Many of us would say that if the manuscript is co-authored by reputed author then it surely would contain original work but I bet, it is not always true...

I recommend a scientific document be rejected for publication in a mathematics journal that I work as a reviewer, when it lacks originality, lack of clarity in presentation and proper sequencing of results and when results or the topic of the article is outside the domain of discourse of the journal.

Thanks for all of the valuable answers from different perspectives. As a reviewer, I usually put myself in other's shoes in trying to find their good points from the manuscript before making my decision to reject it from my first screening. The authors usually try their best to make their manuscript as complete as possible. However, in several cases, they might fail to completely and clearly present their new ideas/ findings in their first version. When we are invited to review a manuscript, it must meet some basic criteria of the journal in terms of scope, technical format, etc. before it is sent to us. Therefore, unless the manuscript is poorly written or carelessly prepared or has severe errors in their fundamental literature, I think it's worth offering them a chance to discuss and improve their manuscript; so that we can get "a diamond from the sand" as mentioned by Mercedes in previous answer.

When there is fundamental flaw in the paper. It shows that paper is not correct in the basic principles -

First, Scope of the journal

Second, Concept wise flaw

Third, Quality and clarity of writing

Fourth, No contribution to Academic or Practitioner

Fifth, structure of the paper not meeting the required guidelines

these are the things one need to consider before submission, else high chance of receiving rejection, major revision, and minor revision...

I want to turn perspective to further contribute to this discussion (and because most points for rejection are already mentioned):

"Which problems in a paper would you accept and only comment in a first review round to not get rejected?" We all agree, that if an article has fundamental method errors or is over-interpreting its results or does simply not fit to the journal, then it is rejected.

But what if "only" the language and style is bad or the narrative of reasoning is not clear? Or only some aspects of the method are intransparent and you need more info? Or the authors fail to formulate clear implications or conclusions? If the author does not see the core limitations? etc pp.

When I do reviews, this is the normal case, that papers do not have extreme failures, but are "somehow" weak and authors need guidance what to do. This is why I perceive the role of a reviewer not as a quality control but as a coach or trainer.

So a rejection for me comes, if it is not possible to improve the paper to journal standards in a considerable amount of time, because method, empirics, data or other challanges are so severe.

As a reviewer, I've recommended rejection on 6 papers.

1. Two of them had no clear scholarly contribution at all and I was surprised they got past the desk editor

2. One was a "follow-up paper" from a paper written by the same authors 15 years before and the question/approach they presented has long been discussed and settled in the literature (and there was no real literature review in the paper) - I know the main professor who answered the question so I know that a good answer exists

3. One was a study that looked like the three authors had just written different sections and dumped them together in a way they didn't fit - it did not follow any of the relevant standards nor had any clear description of their methods or experiments. This was the only paper I've seen where all three reviewers said reject after one review.

4. One case where I recommended rejection because the authors did not seem to understand the topic and were making exaggerated claims with only a small amount of evidence. There were four reviewers on that paper, two said reject and two said major revision - the editor decided to give them a chance to revise the paper before rejecting it. They ended up adding another author who rewrote the paper and made it much better after three rounds of revision - it ended up getting accepted after a long revision cycle.

5. One obvious plagiarism case that the journal investigated and banned the corresponding author (the other "authors" did not know about the paper)

If the paper is outright bad, I will reject it. If it is fixable, the difference between minor and major revision is generally the amount of time I think it will take for the authors to address the concerns adequately.

To my knowledge, rejecting or accepting a manuscript is in Editor's hands, but editors generally don't go against reviewers' comments and suggestions. What they generally do is if reviewer's comments are strongly negative, they send the manuscript to other reviewers for review in hope of positive response. Reviewer's generally recommend accept after minor or major revisions. In rare cases when 'fraud' and 'plagiarism' is suspected by the reviewer (which the editor has missed), the reviewer rejects.

Just check it to clarify your doubts

https://www.elsevier.com/connect/8-reasons-i-rejected-your-article

Being a reviewer I feel if there is

fundamental flaw in the article means paper is not correct in the basic principles

Scope of the journal itself is different

Quality and clarity of writing are very poor

Prior art is not discussed in details

Novelty/uniqueness is unseen in the article

Structure of the paper not meeting the specified guidelines given by the journal

these are the most important author should consider before/while submission, otherwise there is a fair possibility of receiving rejection, major revision, and minor revision comments from the editor.

i have to reject paper when this paper not follow the journal guidelines and when the paper not include any methodology

Greetings, I think this is a hot issue as I see similar discussions like this.

I hate declining papers as I review them and often try to be constructive so the paper can be published as it is or with modification. I try to give as much as possible feedback so the authors can review their papers and re-submit. However, recently, I felt like I had to reject a paper because I realized that the claimed DATA was almost never presented in the paper, and there were many factual errors. The author talked about his DATA but never provided the details of the DATA in the paper as if the paper was built upon an imaginary DATA.

As a peer reviewer, one should critically analyze the manuscript and list the strengths and weaknesses. It is left to the Editor to decide whether to send for major corrections / reject straight away.

I reject the papers when the papers do lack sufficient research, contain full of grammatical errors, do not follow proper standards such as APA, and also even after given them recommendations to improve they fail to do, I generally turn down those papers.

Abdalla, although the reviewer can make an initial assessment of a paper to determine the extent to which it fits within the target journal's publication requirements, the ultimate decision to reject or to accept, subject to major or minor amendments rests with the guest editor of a special issue or the editor of the journal.

Hi,

A paper may be rejected if it does not adder to the journal's research area, or to the journal's style. It could be rejected also when the reviewers decide that it does not contribute new information to the research field.

Papers are typically rejected because they lack any novelty, there are some major errors, the theory has no clear motivation, the results are too trivial, the paper is very hard to comprehend and if they are written in too bad English. other reasons may appear also depending on the scientific field.

Hi,

As a reviewer I would reject a paper if it is not in an adequate level and requirements of the journal, and if, according to my expertise, it does not contribute enough to existing material in the research area.

I will recommend rejection of a manuscript if:

i. the experimental design is faulty

ii. grammatical expression is poor

I would recommend the rejection of a manuscript based on the following:

1. The work lacks scientific merit - the manuscript does not make any significant improvement to the intended field of research.

2. Personal biases are elevated above sound logical reasoning.

3. Methods are defective.

4. The content are not properly written in the required language.

Hi,

I would reject a paper if it is not in the scope of the journal, or that the English is not edited, or if the paper does not contribute anything new to the field, or that its analysis is a copy of data from a database without inserting something new to the analysis.

Makes sense to me ...

I would reject the article if it is beyond the scope of the journal's interest or if the English language is poor and therefore the article is incomprehensible. Also, if the article adds nothing new to the topic or if its analysis is a copy of the data from another article, without citing.

Besides, I would reject the article if there were traces of statistical manipulation in the results. In addition, I would recommend rejection primarily in the absence of approval from the bioethics committee for clinical trials. In human studies, I would certainly ask, if there was no such information in the text of the article, whether the participants or their representatives (in the case of persons under the age of 18) signed informed consent to participate in the study. If there was no clear position here, after asking the authors, I would also advise you to reject such an article.

In my experience as a reviewer, reasons for rejection are

1. Lack of novelty (the most often) - especially if relevant papers are not cited; 2. Fatal and multiple flaws in methodology (experimental - or in theory) (not so oftem); 3. "Hybrid fake" - really (and, maybe, perfectly) generated raw data are followed by imitation of discussion (now it's very often phenomenon!). Sometimes, it's difficult to evaluate. 4. Plagiarism (no cases in my experience yet - but I have heard a lot); 5. Other violations of science ethics (same). As for poor English or vague descriptions, I recommend major revision, if there are no other reasons to reject.

Dear Dr.Fathy,

As s fairly novice reviewer and an author, I feel that every manuscript should be given a fair chance of getting published. For this editorial and peer review should be unbiased and I would like to call 'humane' orempathic. It may sound too lenient but the fact that only a few manuscripts contain intentionally manufactured or tampered data should not subject the rest to the guillotine of rejection at the outset.

So far a common and at times 'cruel' reason for rejection is substandard writing. Specially among academics inwhom the native tongue is not english. Eventhough the structure and content are acceptable, this might push a reviewer for a rejection. But, the good news is if the reviewer mainly points this in revision request, you can get he help of a mentor or a colleague fluent in english or even get professional editing help.

Not in the scope of the journal, not adding any new knowledge to the existing literature, insufficient sample number, gross errors in statistics are other less forgiving reasons for a outright rejection.

So my advice would be to get your basic methodology and statistics and english right at the submission thus you would be fortunate to get your hard work 'accepted' or get a revision to stand a fighting chance to get published with proper rebuttal.

Simply, when the scientific integrity is a serious issue. In addition, lack of scientific evidance in the results. Bad scientific expression of the outcomes.

The novelty is another important factor, however, some repeated studies are important when they came from different laboratories.

Lack of novelty, analysis is a copy from similar work without citing.

I would recommend the rejection of a manuscript based on the following: 1. The work lacks scientific merit .2- the manuscript does not make any significant improvement to the intended field of research

Dear all

I only try to think of it like a reader. I rejected a manuscript if I was pretending to be a reader from that journal and I think “I would hate to read this article”. That hate may actually be for reasons similar to what has been mentioned such as “novelty” as mentioned by M. Golam Mortuza or lack of scientific merit as suggested by Manar Ezz Elarab Ramadan . It does not matter what is the reason - if I think “I would not want to read this in the journal” then I think it is my duty to advise the editor “do not make the readers get this”.

Mostly the rejection will be completed by the editor himself in good high-quality journals and that option may not come to the peer reviewer. After assessing the minimum credibility of the article only editor will assign for peer review.

If the manuscript is scientifically inappropriate with inaccurate methedology

Having read my predecessors comments that I have to highlight some pertinent answer for this question ❓

Mostly there are three types of options to evaluate the manuscripts quality as follows:

Major Revision

* The topic and the contents are not coincided with scientific innovative ideas.

* The objectives might not fulfill the content of the manuscript.

* The research gap is not well identified in the manuscript.

Minor Revision

* The manuscript needs to be updated as per the Reviewer comments.

* Usually, the manuscripts are circulated for reviewing is to improve the quality as per the norms of the publication.

* Modifying based of the Reviewer comments that the manuscripts could reach the expected quality in turn many readers will cite that manuscripts in the future.

Rejection

* It is out of the capacity of the Reviewers to reject the manuscripts because of quality and it does not fulfill the criteria of the publication.

* Reviewer proposing to reject but the Editor has to take decisions to reject or to improve or modify or it is allowed to sent other Reviewers for second round reviewing.

The final objectives are to maintain the quality of the manuscripts to bring the standard quality articles followed by many scientific publications activities like citations, indexing, h-index, impact factor, metrics etc to be pursued after publications.