I have had several papers rejected by journals because of an inability of the journal to find reviewers. As an author this is incredibly frustrating as not only do you spend a long time waiting for review but you also do not receive any helpful feedback from the reviewers.
Apart from suggesting reviewers to the Journal, what other strategies could authors use to help in this situation?
1. Try a different, more suitable journal.
2. incorporate a broader range of material into the work.
David - not much you can do about it. You are at the behest of the journal to find you reviewers. There is an alternative. Many journals now, as part of the manuscript submission process, ask you to recommend reviewers. You can seek them out. It does not mean that they will use them - but mostly they would. There are obvious criteria for the reviewers around conflict of interest i.e. you have not worked with them before, not from the same institution.
Hi David - I have only responded to this issue by providing potential reviewers to the journal but am interested if there are other ways around this
Jacqueline Martin-Kerry I've in the past provided a review from one journal to another journal and asked if they can use it. I've tried to negotiate editors to talk to each other.
I'm at wits end!
Thanks Dean Whitehead for your very sensible response. I feel as authors there are limited options. As a journal editor I feel it's my responsibility to try even harder!
I think that the editor should not deal with any research paper that is not within the research scope of the journal and the journal should provide an excellent number of reviewers specialized in the scope of its work and so Sabkha can deal with the lack of reviewers so that there is no shortage at all
1. Obviously, the manuscript is a highly technical one. The author made a mistake in his choice of journal. Going after all-purpose journals usually ends up like this. If the author had taken pains to read the journals' scope description, they would have understood the journal's limitations.
2. Since the author has decided to publish his paper in the journal that wastes their time, then I recommend patience on the part of the author
3. Apart from the journal's scope, the author was also supposed to know the duration between submission and acceptance/publication.
4. All hope is not lost, simply withdraw the manuscript and send to a more specific journal after carefully considering the points above.
follow-up with the editors, propose additional names of reviewers or cancel the submission and resubmit the paper to other journals with more extensive reviewer database.
Dear David,
1.First read previously published articles on the journal, and manuscript preparation format of the journal.
2. Be sure that the manuscript is well written, and is in line with the scope of the journal.
- the title, abstract and background/ introduction sections should be SMART to convince the editors.
3. If the journal request you to suggest reviewers, you have to suggest reviewers based on relevant experiences. The editorial board may check if your suggestions are based on professional experience, i.e. research and publication.
4. The editorial board is not competent enough to manage your manuscript.
Therefore, the last option is to withdraw from the journal, and to search for another manuscript specific journal.
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