Before submitting to a journal, the scope has to match the content of your submission. This is clear, however, many editors these says use this cliche statement "Thank you for submitting your manuscript. I regret to inform you that your manuscript does not fit within the scope of the journal and we must therefore reject it."
For instance as part of the scope of the journal, it reads " Big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence applications and case studies", on seeing this, we submitted a paper where machine learning tools have been used (single and ensemble algorithm).
To add to those above, the transfer desk of elsevier suggested the journal as one of those that match our subject matter.
If the declared scope is unclear, then try reading a few articles from the journal. Would your paper fit in with them, or would it stand out as different?
Which journals do the papers you cite come from? Would your paper fit in any of those journals?
Good luck - getting into print the first time is a long and painful process. It helps to have a co-author who has some experience of the process.
Thanks Chris Morris , we did! We even saw many similar papers published in the same journal. My point is even when the scope matches the submission, the reply as stated above was still sent. What then is the problem with our Editors?
dear salami,
1-language of your article
2-correct scientific termionology used or not
3-similarity report
4-report prepared from the advisory board and managing editor
if all four item satisfies the journal requirements at that time your paper's review process will be start.
Ertug
Satisfying a journal's requirement may not necessary mean that such manuscript will go out for reviewing.... What I think may be responsible for your case is that the editor seems not interested in the submitted manuscript even though your manuscript 'satisfies' the scopes of such journal. In as much it is a good manuscript, it will get published elsewhere. Also, take note of what Ertug Aydin stated as regards similarity report.. A very good manuscript with a very minimal similarity report would likely go through reviewing process. All the best.
My point of view, and you should be wary of some journals, is to sell works for which you have spent valuable time.
Dear Dr. Salami, Babatunde Abiodun Salami
In addition to what other contributors have said, you may want to look at the focus area of the Journal viz-a-viz your manuscript. As an instance, the scope of the journal could be application of "Big data," "machine learning," and "artificial intelligence applications and case studies" to the Petroleum industry, however, if your manuscript focuses on another area of application of machine learning, it would be deemed to be out of scope of the journal. Another area you may want to consider is your data source/type (original or simulated data), many editors these days use it as a reason to reject good manuscript. In many cases, editors/reviewers look at the publication track record of the authors on that subject area to make decisions on the manuscript, which to me is unethical.
Dear Dr. Babatunde Abiodun Salami, I suggest paying special attention to indexing terms and keywords related to the previous articles in the journal. From there, you can use it for contrasting them to the ACM Computing Classification System.
In that way, you could estimate the cover area related to the previous works and to evaluate the eventual pertinence of your article based on index terms and keywords.
I think that the editors should explain how your manuscript is not related to the journal's scope. Obviously, you didn't blindly submit to their journal without knowing the journal scopes and IF. On the other hand, in good journals, rejection is good because editors and reviewers gave constructive comments and strong justifications.
Each journal is framed by areas of interest and more specific axes, it may be that research work overlaps two or more areas, forcing some publishers to reject certain articles because they are not broken trops the head to examine the entire article.
The editors of some low IF journals (specifically Q3 and Q4) wants self citation of relevant papers published in their journal. If we cite a few, they are happy and initiate review process. This is because they want to improve their IF.
Also, I think that now-a-days the increased rejection rate and delay in publication process is because the race of journals to improve their IF.
In this case what strategy should be adopted to ensure that your publication will be well accepted?
I had the chance to know few people who are working in such Journals; the situation there is simply inhuman and unprofessional! Daily, the editor assistants are requested to give an initial decision for about 100 articles that might not be of direct relevance to their field! So no wonder why you are seeing such "copy-paste" rejection letters that hoping you will give up on annoying them again :/ Most of the publications nowadays are more of business and academic ranking tool rather than scientific, sadly.
Hamzah M. Beakawi Al-Hashemi thanks so much for sharing this.
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