I submitted my research paper to a journal called Physics of Life Reviews in Early August of 2021. One month later it still said on the author manager website that the paper was untouched, so I emailed them asking them about it and also gave them a link to a video I had made about my paper. A day later, their website showed activity on the paper. In the description of the video, I linked a draft of my paper(google drive), for any curious viewers. I'm guessing this was a rule violation, because three months later, in December, they decided to withdraw my submission. I asked them why, and they still have not given me an answer.
I'm very frustrated because it seems like journals are allowed to waste anyone's time and not be held accountable. They knew about the video for 3 months, so if that was the reason for the withdrawn submission, they essentially knowingly wasted 3 months of my time for no reason at all. Why is this allowed? Why are journals given so much power, but independent researchers are forced to follow all these rules and when you break one rule suddenly you just wasted 4 months? Better yet why are journals allowed to simply not respond to you and pretend you don't exist? The elitism is just off the charts and the power dynamic is unproductive and simply wrong. Researchers, the people putting in the work and making discoveries, are treated like second class citizens, whereas, journals do whatever the please at their own slow pace with no accountability.
I would like to mention that the whole reason I put the paper in my YouTube video before being published is because the discovery I have made is phenomenal and ground-breaking, and I felt that the information should be public and widespread as soon as possible. So I would like some advice, if anyone is willing. The main problem is that every journal I have submitted to has basically said that my paper is out of scope. I was hopeful about PLR because my paper is essentially about the physics of life, so the scope is perfect for the journal. I feel like there aren't any journals left for me to submit to that are within the scope of my paper. Should I just keep submitting to journals, or is there some better way that I can get my paper peer-reviewed? Any advice would be awesome! The paper is linked, so please read as well.
I guess your paper was not accepted because it does not follow the usual style of scientific publications, both formally and with regard to language. You should take other papers as examples, including the style of citations.
Hi Jobe!
I find your text interesting, but I agree with Wolfgang R. Dick about the formalities in your document. It is not easy for a journal to publish looking like this even if the content may be somewhat interesting.
I think you need an established researcher as a co-author and/or future PhD supervisor. You are a BSc, making interesting but also unfamiliar claims and assertions in the crossroads of statistics, evolutionary biology, geology, astronomy, etc. Even if you had a formally acceptable text and also were 100% right in everything (I am not saying you are, but if...), an established journal will guard its reputation for its readers, authors and reviewers. To publish a too different text coming from a non-established author is complex and risky. The journal will have difficulty finding reviewers to trust for making a decision to publish. Reviewers will not accept the review task - or they will accept, and then reject the manuscript without putting much work into it. Too different. It does not relate well enough to their existing research culture and way of doing science.
You may be on to something, or you may not. If you study the history of sciences you can find that authors of new groundbreaking scientific publications often experience many rejections from many journals before publication. They are just too different to fit into the existing scientific paradigms. (Kuhn's "The structure of scientific revolutions" is an interesting reading here.) Some experts on historic scientific theory development and discovery, as Peter Feyerabend, say that big scientific progress is exactly about being wrong in the eyes of the existing science. (However, far from all manuscripts that today are considered too disruptive or plainly wrong now will show to be publishable later - only a microscopic portion of them.)
So the best advice I can give you is to get an established researcher to discuss with you and possibly help you - or help you in some other direction. Why not research the factors you present one by one, in a number of separate articles, for trying broader conclusions later.
Hello Jobe Soffa Clarke
I wonder if the content (and the conclusion, of course) is beyond the scope of that particular journal and you would have more success with another journal...!
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