While submitting my manuscript, I first of all check that the Journal is not on predatory List or a stand-alone journal , secondly that the paper is listed either in ISI or Scopus. Thirdly I checked the lead time (period of submission to acceptance). How long does a paper takes before accepted ? Fourth, I equally checked the acceptance rate of a paper before submitting my manuscript. Lastly, I checked for frequency of the Journal before submitting. Is this Journal a monthly issue, bi-monthly, quarterly, or twice in a year or even yearly ? All these is what check before submitting my paper.

Thank you !

Make sure the theory is accurate and have a superb abstract

Simply, it depends on your accumulated experience in your field of knowledge and how to structure your manuscript!

Anyway, good luck my colleague.

Emad

I can see the number of readers on this question has doubled during the last 2 days, but no new answers are shared. That's even more intriguing than the question itself.

Look at the target journal and see their preferred conventions. No point in sending an article to a publication that is predisposed to rejecting certain approaches.

I once met a professor who had a different strategy than her husband. Both of them were careful to target the appropriate journal, write for it, etc...all the normal rules. Their strategy differed on rejection. She was of the school to take each comment seriously, revise and resbumit. He was more likely to diregard the reasons behind rejection and just resubmit elsewhere . She said they had equal success. My main lesson from this was that reviewers need to do a better job.

Dear Bruce, yours is not exactly an answer to my question but, hey, what a great comment indeed! I agree with your lesson entirely. However, I would definitely support "her" way to respond, as the way I would suggest to my students. But it is true that reviewers and editors seem to be a bit overwhelmed lately. For instance, we see -by far- too many retractions due to plagiarism. But to be honest, it is also true that many peer reviewers and editors are volunteers (pro bono) and they try to do the best possible. I think that if reviewers were rewarded in some way (more than a public acknowledgment or x-months of free access to the journal's articles), they would do even better.

Hi Ale,

I guess the issue may be even more complicated nowadays, since the first (and sometimes the harder) obstacle is to convince the editor to send your work for review. In this lines, I recently noticed that some experienced and successful (in therms of publication record) colleges spend days working on the coverletter. For me, instead, it was one of the very least important issues, and I used to solve in the last minute by using a template and some specific lines about the work.

Hola Pedro. Very interesting your perception (as editor) that people are focusing their efforts in making more convincing cover letters.

It is known that a solid cover letter will not (should not) convince an editor of sending a bad manuscript out for review. However, we need to remind young researchers that many excellent works are undermined by a bad cover letter. So, I would definitely suggest young researchers paying serious attention to their cover letters.

I have to say I don't enjoy writing cover letters. However, on the bright side, writing cover letters often provides you one (last?) chance to clarify your ideas before submitting the ms.

I tend to work extra hard on the title (not always catchy, but solid and clear), the abstract (the main section of the paper, I would argue), the first paragraph of the intro, the last paragraph on the intro, the first paragraph on the discussion and all the graphs.

I write also a very solid letter explaining why the paper is ideal for the given journal. and I put time to pick potential reviewers (experts but also people that will also agree to review it)

I do not care much for the format of the references, but it is clear that the more targeted you do a paper for given journal the higher your chances are (and the disappointment if it gets rejected....)

I agree with Martin. You want an informative title. Simple is better. Saying the direction of an effect is good if possible.

In terms of responding to reviewers I find it hard to believe that ignoring a reviewer's comments is a good strategy. I often am asked to review a paper a second time and don't respond positively to my time being wasted. I've never contacted an editor before except for journals that require that.

For Bruce A Robertson response, I would like to say most journals, particularly high impact journals, belonging to the same publisher or share the topic are connected. As we submit our peer-review reports, they ask, "if this manuscript is rejected, would you agree to share your report with other journals?" Yes/No, "Do we need your permission before transferring your report to other journals" Yes/No. Therefore, this option you mentioned is not going to work. I am aware of such links between journals for the last 2-3 years, and it is increasing.

Another common mistake is to argue with the reviewers in the response letter and try to show that you understand more than them or do not address the points raised in their reports. This will never help authors and usually will end with a rejection.

Following the -author's guidelines as per the target journal and suggestions put forwarded by the reviewers during resubmission..

In my opinion:

1. Work on a trending topic. This is more applicable to review articles, of course, since original research is more complicated to handle.

2. Prepare an impressive manuscript in terms of writing. Your manuscript should read fluidly and flawlessly. It's also a good strategy to use some catchy phrases to better convey the message. This is something I personally try to do. I enjoy writing.

3. Keep the authors count as low as possible, if possible! This also applies to the number of references. Cooperate with reputable authors.

4. Choose a pertinent journal. Time and time again we submit our manuscripts to the wrong journal, that results in rejection. My paper recently got rejected due to "low priority", not "low quality", since I had submitted it to the wrong journal.

Concerning Samy A. Azer 1st answer. Totaly true. I hear people often saying "I submitted to a different journal but it seems I got the same s##y reviewer". Most people wouldn't know that Editors may share reviews of a given ms, or that they even may invite the same reviewers that reviewed a given manuscript in another journal (owned by the same Company/Society/Editorial). Ergo: If your manuscript was reviewed and rejected, it is advisable that you try to incorporate all the reviewers' comments and suggestions *before* submitting to another journal.

Dear all,

I would like to share with you this new essay by Scott Hotaling (already in RG for you to download!):Article Simple rules for concise scientific writing

Abrazos

Ale

For many high-ranking journals (at least in biological sciences) nowadays it seems that as long as you have money to pay the open-access APC, you are accepted at a much higher rate than those who ask for waivers and otherwise can't afford the APC. So I guess the simplest method would be to have access to institutional funds.

In my opinion, it is advisable to read the last papers that the target journal has published and to compare with self-criticism the type and quality of own paper with the Impact Factor of the target journal. Finally, the guidelines for authors in some cases can give some advice on papers that are published by the journal as a priority. It goes without saying, finally, that aims and scope of the journal must be carefully read. Experience, intuition, and luck do the rest.

Note sure why RG thinks I should answer this… but here are my 2 cents… recognizing I deal mostly with clinical and pre-clinical biomedical topics and not sure how relevant it applies elsewhere

1. Pick a journal that best aligns your paper in terms of topic and interest. Has the journal publish related topics before? Is the impact of the journal at the same level as your paper? Is the audience correct? We are often asked to rate how relevant the topic is. Looking at recent issues can help to see if your paper fits.

2. Pick a journal that covers your study type. Instruction for authors usually has this info. This seems particularly true for reviews, case studies, observational studies, and meta-analyses.

3. Cover letters put your work in context… why is it important? Does your work continues the story told by a recent paper in the same journal? Does this work answer big questions raised during the last national conference/meeting? Does the paper further the aim of the journal in some unexpected way? If you don’t know why your paper is important, why should anyone else?

4. Recommending reviewers and handling editor is a hit or miss. Recommending a handling editor seems to only help if your topic is not clearly in the realm of one of the editors… which is already problematic. Some journals appreciate reviewer recommendations, others will ask for them then ignore them. Recommending reviewers seems to do better for smaller journals that may accept them and help streamline the process. Won’t hurt either way.

5. Contacting the editor. Not the norm for my field and rarely done. Exceptions are when you are writing an unsolicited review or interesting case study kind of thing. What would you say? Difficult for editor to judge the merit of your study without data/manuscript. I would put whatever is important in the cover letter instead.

6. Title should be clear and helpful. Avoid turning your title into a click-bait. Trying to make the title catchy and cute often only makes the content very unclear. Worse, if your title does not match your findings, we will write “conclusion not supported by actual results/findings.”

7. Authorship should be reasonable. A paper with 20+ authors that can be done with 3-5 makes the authors and paper look bad. Subconsciously, a paper with more authors is often judged more harshly due to higher expectations.

8. Language editing- have someone who speaks the language check your manuscript. If we can’t understand your work, we can’t review it fairly and have no choice but to click “requires major language editing.” Sometimes the writing is so bad that you can’t tell what it says. Do you have international collaborators who can review your paper for both content and language?

9. Be concise- avoid mentioning things you do not know anything about. We see this in biomedical papers quite a bit, where authors try to make their papers more “clinically relevant” by randomly mentioning specific diseases without backing their claims. Usually this is done badly that it distracts from the study.

10. Avoid citing papers unnecessarily and incorrectly and don’t plagiarize… including yourself. Sometimes the reviewers are identified from your references. We do not take it kindly when you cite us for things we did not say. We like it even less when you plagiarize us. Key and review papers are often very well known, and obvious when you copy them.

11. Consider reviewer comments even if your paper is rejected. Human beings spent their time reading and reviewing your work for free (usually)... use it. The academic world is a very small place… sometimes we get the exact same manuscript to review that we have previously read for a different journal.

12. Publish for quality not quantity... sadly a sentiment not endorsed by some academic environments in terms of promotion opportunities.

-Angry reviewer #2

Thank you everybody for the great advice you are sharing.

Thank you Anderson H Kuo for taking the time to make a nice and complete response, summarizing most of what the rest of us said. An excellent compilation for young and not so young colleagues as well. NOTE: I don't know what "RG thinks" either :-) but I'm sure many people will appreciate your advice.

Thanks Russell Gray for calling my attention about the role of $$ in the "#GameOfPublishing". How paid-journals deal with the conflict of being paid by authors trying to publish their work? If you don't see the conflict, you have to. I'll explain more in a different RG question so we don't change the nature of this one.

Thank you for your sharing advices

Many thanks to everybody for sharing great opinions and advice. Remember that what may seem obvious and basic to you can be revealing and helpful to others. So please do not hesitate in sharing personal specific experiences that may help others to improve their chances of (ms) acceptance.

Publication nowadays is a struggle! Very high competetion eventhough it is easy to communicate!

Here are a few of the top reasons papers are rejected by journals/reviewers: no original contribution or does not fill a research gap, unclear thesis or research question, unclear or poorly developed theoretical framework, failure to engage sufficiently with other sources, poor organization, unclear grammar and expression. Make sure you keep these key considerations in mind as you write and revise. Also be sure to follow all submission guidelines to the letter, including instructions about formatting and language. If you are uncertain about these factors, have multiple people review the article for you before you submit. You might also want to consider using a professional editor to offer detailed feedback on these issues - if so, make sure you choose an editor who specializes in academic editing specifically and has experience of academic publishing. Finally, pay attention to and act on any feedback you receive from reviewers and editors. I am a published academic and experienced freelance academic editor - if you are interested in editing services, you can visit me at www.readwriteperfect.com.

In addition to all the other excellent answers, I would also add: don't oversell! In my area (ecology), it has been almost fashionable (and I have unfortunately done it myself) to try to frame a study as a "hot topic" and discuss the results far outside the scope of the study. There are many causes to this problem, but things are luckily changing. Reviewers and editors, including myself, are increasingly annoyed with hyped-up titles and abstracts. I realize that this is a fine line to walk and I still struggle with it, but I think a sure way to rejection is when reviewers feel that you oversell.

Thank you Maria Paniw, for this addition to this thread. I agree. People tend to think that speculating with trend topics to forcefully frame their manuscripts is a good solution to increase their chances of publication. We see that all the time. Now, for instance, tons of papers (actually published papers) claim to be framed by the COVID-19 problem and force the inclusion of the SARS-COV2 virus in order to gain visibility, flooding journals with deceiving information and/or false expectations. The entire international scientific community should work to prevent this speculative strategy.

My advice there is: stand by your original goals, objectives, theoretical framework, your concluding remarks. Be genuine. Be original. That doesn´t mean that you can't adjust your writing to new trending topics. Of course you can do that, or at least you can try. But do not speculate on that with the only purpose of increasing your publication rate.

Help the Editor(s) to review your ms by providing a list of potential reviewers who are suitable and possibly available to do it while avoiding people you have worked with.

Yes, i agree the proposition of Mauro Lucherini. This list of reviewers can help in the publishing procces and this will be faster

I think new ideas on selection the title of your research and review's comments are very helpful indication on how/what the journal (editor) concentrated in or concerned about!. The idea of publishing depends on the contents nor by the quantity , style or format and how you are able to express it in a high sense. My experience is very simple but it taught me a lot.

Here is a recent paper in Nature from my colleague. For your entertainment ;) It depicts some issues we encounter too often nowadays.

Dear Remi Sonier

thank you for sharing this interesting Nature's piece about harsh peer-reviews (I will share it on Twitter: @Ale_Bortolus). So, what's your advice to successfully deal with a harsh review? How would you answer a harsh review (er) without causing more negative feedback which (eventually) would decrease the acceptance chances of your manuscript instead of increasing them?

... I would suggest to submit only top science :-)

Nowadays many papers are boring, because they present small bits of new information. What used to be monographs in the past is sometimes split into several short publications that do not give an overall view on the scientific problem to the reader. The reason might be that the number of publications is often used as measure of the quality of a scientist. Perhaps it is an idea to write longer comprehensive contributions that tell an interesting story. This will also convince reviewers and editors.

Find a journal that is specialized and which appreciate the merit and novelty of your work. Send to the r

Find a journal that is specialized and which appreciate the merit and novelty of your work. Send to the right people.

I think the best method is to apply common sense.

I agree Manju M. Gupta

I think researcher can appreciate timing of acceptance according to its last articles reviewing process.

Also, politic of journal and number of daily or monthly submissions effet this.

But this daily or monthly submissions is related to visibility, impact ans indexing of the journal

Dear Alejandro,

I think there is no formula, right? In my little experience, I believe that the acceptance of manuscripts does not depend exclusively of author's experience. I have been told by experienced colleagues that their manuscripts are also rejected.

What I have noticed, in my little experience, is that selecting the correct journal is a crucial step (although it sure is something that everyone knows very well). Sometimes it is advisable to contact a journal editor to confirm whether the manuscript matches the journal's aims amd scopes. In addition to reading published works of the journal and if they are similar to your manuscript.

I had a bad experience when I submitted an article in a journal. The editors considered my manuscript matched with the aims of the journal, but which I doubted. It turned out to be an unsuitable journal. There were no specialized editors on the subject and their response was to reject it based on a negative evaluation by one of the reviewers (the other reviewer was positive), instead of consulting a third reviewer. Therefore, choosing the wrong journal can lead to many delays and frustrations.

The choice of the title also seems to be very important. If it can be showy (keeping the formality) I think it has more chances of acceptance. In my experience, a single misused word in the title can be a reason for rejection (although in general one has the opportunity to modify it without being rejected).

On the other hand, checking the format and style of the last published issue can be of great help. I believe that the format should be as neat and compliant as possible, to avoid conflict with both editors and reviewers.

I know that I say is not new to researchers like you! But I hope it is helpful for anyone who reads it.

Best regards,

Adriel

Dear Adriel I. Jocou

Thank you very much for your insight. Indeed, I posted this debate in an attempt to help young/early-career scientists who may be looking for clues before submitting a manuscript. In that context, any tips, especially tips like yours including personal experience, are of great help. What is obvious to one may be a great finding for others. So, thank you again for sharing with us your experience! I'm sure it will be appreciated by many.

Abrazos from Patagonia

Ale

Dear Jane Mm

thanks for your insight. I prefer sharing links/sources in which the authors are not anonymous. Especially when we try to provide advice I think it is important to allow readers to know who the advisors are. Experienced researchers usually give good advice, but for me, it is especially nice when I read great advice/ideas coming from students/young researchers. I encourage you to make a synthesis of this perspective and your personal one, to share here with us. I'm sure people will appreciate that very much!

Ale

I believe publishing is a bit like all other activities that we need to learn as we grow up, such as walking, cycling, swimming, driving, investing, making friends etc. none of which we are born with the knowledge or skills to do. We learn to do these by watching others, trying to do it ourselves, and failing a few times before finally being able to do it without many problems. Hope this helps!

I do agree with Piyush

I agree with Piyush Sharma

It is art of learning.

A very question to ponder thoroughly! The Scientific Sectors are also those that indicate the guidelines to follow!Thanks a lot

A very good question. It depends upon so many factors, like which type of journal you are focusing upon. SCI, SCOPUS or referred journal. Most of the journal ask validation of results with the help of plots, whereas some journal ask to give tabular data. Journal is of which stream like engineering, management field, economics etc.

New topic

Strong language

Good method

Try to find specialized journals. This can be helpful to accelerate acceptance of your manuscript.

Hi. Yes and the following website answer your question in details:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/wordvice.com/amp/post/11055

Your Idea must be updated(even it brings some improvement). Your grip on words and presentation style must be understandable.

I think this is a question asking by many scientists, the main methods for increasing chance accepteness is journal sélection according to scops and aims. Also, simplicity in editing and writting Can facilitate reviewing process.

The method I used over years is to have top quality and significant results submitted to the appropriate journals

I would say few things. 1. Journal selection: At first, we should conform that whether our article best matches the journal's aim and scope or not? is it in appropriate format?. Moreover, different journals have different impacts, so we have to be very sure about the weight (major findings, novelty) of our paper, whether it is good match with the journals status or not. Further, Plagiarism should be reduced as much as possible. It maximizes the possibility that papers will be sent to the reviewers. 2. Reviewers are the experts in the corresponding fields, so they really love to see newness in our paper. Flow of our language according to the journal format, clearity, less grammar errors increase the reviewer's interest in our paper. 3. Revisions: After the reviewer's comments, we should read them carefully, try to gather information they ask. They suggest to add some lacking information, we should prepare and add them very carefully. Reviewers can be more positive after our good responses. 4. Presentation: we should present our findings in some attractive figures and tables. Data analysis using different statistical tools or methods, can be very advantageous to show our paper worthy.

May be you Can sharing with us your experience. Mainly during submission and révision process. This Can change between Journals, but i think sharing our contributions Can increasing acceptance rate.

Manuscript acceptance can be boosted via sound theoretical basis, very well articulated methodology and thorough evaluation and comparisons of the results.

Only method is to carryout quality research and come up with quality publications.

My colleagues and I presented on this topic at the Canadian Psychological Association Annual Convention in 2019. This presentation was aimed to students in psychology at the undergraduate and graduate level but I believe it has broader applications.

I have added the PDF of this presentation to ResearchGate and I believe it has important information that can be helpful to anyone wanting to get their work published. Here is the RG link:

Presentation To publish or not to publish: Understanding the process of p...

Many thanks, Jérémie Richard , for sharing your work! I see you are from McGill where a former professor of mine used to teach (Mario Bunge). All the best!

Ale