Agreed. I never reject.

It is not the matter that a new research idea is a possible cause that I may reject a paper when I am a reviewer. Otherwise, however, when I feel like that the aurhors are plagiarizing, if the study rationale is basically wrong or if the findings do not cope with the study objectives, then rejection comes out.

Thanks

As a reviewer, Why and When do you propose to reject the paper without letting the authors to revise it?

You can also refer to the following RG links:

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

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

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

If the methodology is not proper there is a chance to reject the paper.

Interesting contributions by respected colleagues on this discussion

Amjad Hazim Al- Naemi for my opinion the plagiarizing is not important if the idea is new, but if there are many error or the study is basically wrong its not acceptable I agree with you on this point

Han Ping Fung thank you so much for these interesting topics

Nirmala S.V.S.G of course I agree with you the methodology and the idea of the work is the most important parts of the research

For me the key is how genuinely the study contributes to knowledge. I see much that, frankly, doesn't. I see much that doesn't even argue that it does! If there is no contribution to knowledge, or indeed no significant contribution to knowledge, why is the author in the space? To gain or preserve tenure or achieve a doctorate are not appropriate answers!

I think many of the published papers I have read so far, you can feel that there is a contribution to the literature. However, if the paper just explains the obvious relationship then you consider that this not a paper really, it is just a story that had already been told.

Dear Mohamed

It depends on the criteria and standards of the journal that you are reviewing for. That and there are different levels of rejection. You can have an outright rejection preventing you from submitting the same manuscript to the journal again. Alternatively, you can have what might be considered a deferred rejection like a revise and resubmit with major revisions. If the author(s) are willing and able to address to revise they can resubmit the paper for a second consideration. The probability of acceptance of a revise and resubmit is higher than a first time submission but there is no guarantee the paper will be accepted. Then there is the revise and resubmit with minor revisions that we think of as a deferred acceptance, but again there is no assurance of certainty in later acceptance. As far as why the reviewer will reject a manuscript, especially one on a new topic, may have to do with the disparity in quality between the typical article published in the journal. Perhaps the significance, or novelty, of the paper is not considered that great. Then there are other submissions where there is a research design flaw, inappropriate methodology, poorly explained theory, too small of a sample, shallow literature review, and bad English (or whichever language the journal publishes in). Nevertheless, for author(s) who have received a rejection all is not lost as one can move on and submit the paper to another journal.

As a reviewer, I propose to reject the paper without letting the authors to revise it where there is no flow of thought from the title to conclusion.

methodological mistakes, theory\es not related to he topic or variables, analyzing issues.

Raymond A K Cox thank you so much for your detailed respond and I'm really benefited from your precise answer

Cenap Ilter Mark Azavedo thank you so much for your valuable comments, I'm really benefited from your precise answer

I have four reasons to reject without revision:

1. The conclusions are not supported by the analysis.

2. The English grammar and syntax is so poor that it would require a native-speaker to edit.

3. The paper is essentially a literature review without any new research content.

4. The contribution to the body of knowledge is trivial.

I see #3 a lot when recently graduated students try to break their thesis up into several papers and send in the lit review as paper.

#4 is usually a function of someone rerunning previous research in a slightly different context and confirming that the previous research contribution also applies to the "new" context...contribution? yes....value? trivial and not worth publishing. These papers are best presented as conference papers.

I also often reject papers with an extensive list of co-authors, like more than 4 or so. I find it impossible to believe that 12 co-authors all made a significant intellectual contribution to a single 10,000 word paper beyond reviewing the draft and maybe sitting on the student's thesis committee. I view this as an integrity issue unfortunately driven by the publish or perish culture.

If the grammar is poor, typing mistakes, the methodology is poor and if not following the journal instructions

Douglas D. Gransberg I agree with you sir, and I would like to thank you so much for these great observations and I really I benefited a lot from these observations, but if non of these observations not found and I find the paper rejected also

thank you

Numan Nafie Hameed thank you so much sir for your great observations but if non of these observations not found and I find the paper rejected also

Douglas D. Gransberg I cant agree more! I like what you mentioned in your comment "I view this as an integrity issue unfortunately driven by the publish or perish culture". Unfortunatley integrity is very subjective and Academics predominantly focus on both number of publications and citations to determine "performance". I believe this had a negative impact on researchers by doing each other a favor- i.e. co-authorship without any real contribution to the research.

That said, as an example, for research that requires large data sets, sometimes a large number of researchers had to collect and potentially analyse data to create a case study. So I believe these people deserve to be aknowledged for their contribution.

What will be interesting is to come out with a measure that can justify each authors invovlvement !

Unfortunately, everyone thinks of themselves as total reason. This is the main problem !!!! The pain is that articles are initially reviewed by the editor who may or may not have enough expertise, or lack of time or .....

Dear Mohammed,

As a reviewer in the 98th percentile in Publons who have reviewed more than 70 articles I NEVER rejected an article because of the novelty of the idea. In addition, I was able in most cases to compare my reviews with reviews of other reviewers on the same article and again, I did not feel that my colleagues undervalued new ideas.

In general, there are several common points why your paper is rejected with no options to revise it:

1) you present the idea as novel, but in many cases it might be presented a few decades ago in good articles which appeared before SCOPUS and WoS were created. Older reviewers immediately recognize quite familiar things (for them), but they not always have the intention to indicate the initial sources;

2) you present indeed a novel idea which is trivial (see Davis' definition on 'what is interesting'), i.e. you merely confirm the common beliefs in a new way (this happens too often in quantitative studies when authors hope that the use of new, more sophisticated techniques to confirm the known things justifies publication)

3) you present a novel idea but have no proper empirical evidence (even anecdotal one) to prove it (this often happens in qualitative studies or in introducing new research constructs)

4) you present your new idea in an "impenetrable" way -- using the existing terminology in a different way from the common meaning, leaving too many gaps in the line of your reasoning etc.

5) your novel idea may be presented as a universal rule, while in reality it may reflect some deviances, organizational pathologies etc. If you have a bad chance to be reviewed by an expert with the good knowledge of real things, she/he immediately imagines a lot of real-life situations for which your idea is inappropriate.

6) finally, there is a language problem. I do not mean just mistakes in spelling and grammar, but some nuances like hedges etc. Please look at a bit cynical but quite informative paper on that topic - "What might get published in management and applied psychology? Experimentally manipulating implicit expectations of reviewers regarding hedges" -- Scientometrics · June 2019

Good luck for your novel idea(s)!

Then may be the editorial board policy to reject good percent of submitted article

'Novel idea' is the least reason for a reviewer suggesting to the consulting editor / editor to reject the paper. Rejecting a paper, because it is 'just' a review paper seems to me similarly unjustified given the increasing calls for and special volumes asking for reviews as the sheer number of publications in any given field is dramatically increasing and it is getting more and more difficult especially for junior scholars to show proficiency with previous studies.

This is exactly one reason (yet, as other have already commented, suggesting a 'reject' means that the paper shows as a rule shortcomings with several evaluation criteria) why a paper may be rejected - its authors ignore previous research and, hence, something appears in the eyes of the beholder as 'novel' and 'innovative' which is indeed old and has been researched from various perspectives.

Other important reasons are:

* breach of scientific ethics such as plagiarism, fabrication of data, slicing and dicing, a.s.f. (e.g. see the book: “The Ethical Professor: A Practical Guide to Research, Teaching and Professional Life” authored by Lorraine Eden, Kathy Lund Dean, and Paul Martin Vaaler),

* negligence or ignorance of the journal's mission and requirements,

* negligence of the established rules and conventions of structuring, writing, and formal layout in the given (sub-)discipline,

* no concept, no theory, no comprehensive flow of argumentation, no comprehensive hypotheses or on the other hand very sophisticated, non-intuitive hypothesis which then are all confirmed

* major citation 'problems', and

* other reasons.

My advice: search for and study guidelines for reviewers of various journals and international conferences in your discipline / research field and a number of editorial pieces on how to write a review and put yourself in the shoes of 'your' reviewers.

Asking peers and friends is often misleading as they have not many incentives to criticize you as they are either afraid of retaliation or of losing you as a friend.

Referring to others, whose works (often submitted to another journal or at another time) have been published although you assess them not to better than your own suffers often from a self-serving bias.

To sum it up, don't take a rejection too personal, wait 24 hours, read the reviewers' (as a rule you will have two or three reviewers plus the consulting editor at least if you submit your paper to a reputed journal or conference) comments again, and try to improve your paper. However, I have to admit that of course reviews can be lousy, careless, and may contain unjustified critique for different reasons. Yet, as long as we have not established a better system to ensure scientific rigor and research quality we have to live with it.

Perhaps it is comforting to know that probably all of us have been annoyed by reviewers and the unsatisfactory result at least once in our scholarly lives.

Let me end with the slogan of the University of Southern California: Fight on! ... persistence pays off.

A paper needs to be robust in its contributions and make a direct and clear statement thru the motivation and the experiment. The rest can come later

Agree with Douglas D. Gransberg ! Contribution is the key!!

Generally, there are several common points why your paper may be rejected:

1. Papers fails to meet the aims and scope of the journal.

2. Contribution is trivial!!

3. Failed to motivate the research by answering these questions in introduction:

"(a)Who cares? What is the topic or research question, and why is it interesting and important in theory and practice?

(b) What do we know, what don’t we know, and so what? What key theoretical perspectives and empirical findings have already informed the topic or question? What major, unaddressed puzzle, controversy, or paradox does this study address, and why does it need to be addressed?

(c) What will we learn? How does your study fundamentally change, challenge, or advance scholars’ understanding?" (Grant and Pollock, 2011)

Meager validity issues can be mitigated during review process!! In my view, this can be one of the supporting point but not the main point for rejection.

I think the reviewers base don their experience can accept to reject the submitted work. However, this decision should be purely based on the submitted work and adhering to journal specific aims and goals

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41291-019-00060-8

Please refer this recent paper in ABM which discusses the reasons for desk rejections. Quite informative for budding researchers.

As a reviewer, the key questions in trying to publish in a 2* and above rated journal are (assuming the paper is relevant for the journal in question):

1. Why should we care?

2. What's new?

3. How logical and well written is the manuscript?

4. Is there any rigour in methodology?

5. Is there demonstrable contribution to knowledge?

I am not sure that all else can be fixed. Choice of area for investigation is as fundamental as the methodology for investigation. I see much from the outset in this way that couldn't viably answer questions around contributions to knowledge and newness let alone why should we care.

I do not reject any paper in the first round. I gave a major revision. The revision will be instructive in terms of methodology and contribution. If the author addressed the comments, I could change to a minor. I know this way takes more time, and we are busy, but in my opinion, this is the only way to help freshman researchers.

Dear Emad Elwakil,

The gold speech and wonderful words, it should give an opportunity to new researchers. The major correction is better than rejection, and if the researchers do not respond to the reviewers here, the right to refuse. But most of the rejection about 70% comes from the journals have high impact factors due to the large number of articles on them. Of course, they prefer well-known researchers with a high citations.

In most of the cases, I recommended "major revisions" rather than rejecting the paper from the first round. Researchers should have opportunities to defend what they have written. If their responses are inadequate, then the second round would be rejecting the paper.

I suggest to read this paper, you will find a good answer to your question.

I do reject a manuscript if I see a serious flaw in the research method.

Rejection due to:

1. Atrocious English

2. Small sample size

3. Proxy variables are very inappropriate

4. Literature review dated such as most recent citation is 20 years, or more, old

5. Wrong statistical technique chosen

Some important reasons to reject without a revise:

1. The article seems to have been put together in a rush manner, without giving importance to the reader's understanding. Also, if the language of the article is vague or meaningless.

2. There is no meaningful relationship between the purpose of the article and the research sample (or data).

3. The subject has been researched many times and the article in question has not contributed new value.

Hope it helps

Best

I will often recommend rejection at first round of submission based on the following reasons (in order of impact):

1. The paper attempts to address a problem that has been profusely researched, but did not justify the departure of the existing argument from the existing findings

2. Similar to the above, if the paper did not explicitly indicate it's novelty to be noticed by an objective reader

3. The paper adapted an existing methodology which is unsuitable for the research problem or the methodology is grossly flawed

4. The paper did not provide a theoretical and conceptual underlinings of the research topic to aid effective discussion of the results

5. The conclusion (s) deviates from the main findings in the paper

6. Plagiarism :- I often check this if the paper directly addresses problems in my area of expertise and content reads familiar

I reject a paper when:

1. It doesn't make a contribution to the field.

2. There is not a link between what the paper has aimed to do and what has been really done.

3. When there is a methodological or goofy mistake in the operationalization of the variables.

4- When the authors have no theoretical basis for proposing their model or hypotheses. In other words, when they just draw a model without showing how that the paths in the model are justified.

Best

Dear all,

Normally, I reject in cases where there are no relevant contributions to the topic, bibliographies cited very old and few quality magazines and very superficial study.

I put "Major Revision" instead of "reject" for a very simple reason - "an interesting study denies some of the assumptions held by a certain audience" (Davis, M.S. (1971), “That’s interesting! Towards a phenomenology of sociology and a sociology of phenomenology”,Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Vol. 1, pp. 309-44). If a paper you review persuade you to look different at some phenomenon (process,object etc.) you may help the authors with suitable methodology and simply to advise to use a native English professional editor. However, too often, especially in top journals I have to review very well written, equipped by adequate references, employing sophisticated methods boring and trivial papers, tat accordingly to M.S.Davis "does not challenge, but merely confirms routinized, taken-for-granted beliefs" (of high-cited researchers).

Every reputed journal has some acceptance criteria. So, before reject a article, I should follow that. In case of original research work, I will give emphasize to the methods, results and conclusion. In fact, I am very much agree with professor Douglas D. Gransberg.

Thank you.

The conclusions do not support the findings.

The methods are entirely flawed.

The English grammar is poor and, therefore, complicated to understand.

Not novelty.