Dear Norina, publishing one's research in a high quality journal is a real challenge for many researchers. To increase your possibility to succeed in this, it is highly important that the topic of your research fits with the journal's aims and scope, and the manuscript is carefully written to follow all the journal guidelines. Also, the study must be theoretically and methodologically justified and sound, carefully conducted, and clearly reported.

Nevertheless, this is not enough. All high impact journals receive far more good quality manuscripts than they will be able to publish. Therefore, you need to draw the editor's attention with a unique contribution. In your study, there must be a clear and remarkable contribution to theory, research, and practice in the field which the journal in question represents.

It is not possible to give one single "recipe" about how to do this, since the criteria for a successful submission depends largely on the field you are contributing to. However, reading and analyzing several articles published in good quality journals in your field should help you in finding some ideas and guidelines. I would also suggest you to find a scientific mentor, who has expertise in your field and could help you to evaluate and improve your contribution.

In finalizing the manuscript, I cannot too much emphasize the value of a skillful native English speaking proof reader, who can do the final language check to the paper.

I hope you will find these suggestions helpful. Good luck with your research!

Virpi-Liisa

Dear your paper will be of high quality from the title to the content and must be relevant to the society and well written.

Ya. I understand that need to have high quality. However, please describe what it means by 'high quality'?

Dear Norina, publishing one's research in a high quality journal is a real challenge for many researchers. To increase your possibility to succeed in this, it is highly important that the topic of your research fits with the journal's aims and scope, and the manuscript is carefully written to follow all the journal guidelines. Also, the study must be theoretically and methodologically justified and sound, carefully conducted, and clearly reported.

Nevertheless, this is not enough. All high impact journals receive far more good quality manuscripts than they will be able to publish. Therefore, you need to draw the editor's attention with a unique contribution. In your study, there must be a clear and remarkable contribution to theory, research, and practice in the field which the journal in question represents.

It is not possible to give one single "recipe" about how to do this, since the criteria for a successful submission depends largely on the field you are contributing to. However, reading and analyzing several articles published in good quality journals in your field should help you in finding some ideas and guidelines. I would also suggest you to find a scientific mentor, who has expertise in your field and could help you to evaluate and improve your contribution.

In finalizing the manuscript, I cannot too much emphasize the value of a skillful native English speaking proof reader, who can do the final language check to the paper.

I hope you will find these suggestions helpful. Good luck with your research!

Virpi-Liisa

Thank you very much Viirpi-Liisa. I appreaciate your response. It help me to understand the weaknesess of my manuscript. I will follow your advise. I hope your explanation will benefit young resarchers like. Thanks again.

Dear Noraini,

I am not so sure about the journal in social sciences. However, I have struggled enough to publish my articles with reputed journals. I succeeded after 20-30 futile attempts. I prefer sharing my experience with you, which I am not sure if majority of the researchers would agree with. You may need to have a brand value; either your institution, or your supervisor, or your organization, must be of repute. If so, the chances of your paper being rejected by the editor himself is very less. Else, you are going to find a tough time to move your manuscript to the peer review process. Your topic should be in trend and should present a new perspective of an existing problem (this is what keeps us thinking a lot). If you try to innovate wholly, you maybe written off easily. The flow of the manuscript must be logical in an easily understandable, comprehensible language. You may prefer using a certified language editor. Try providing supplementary data to avoid missing gaps in the information. Revise your manuscript plenty of times and read it from a third person's perspective; this process would take you a week or so. Try providing comparative references, and try being honest. Justify every result of your study with suitable and recent references (within the last 5 years). When you feel there can't be any more questions, which can arise, finalize the manuscript from your side. If there happens to be a co-author, get his intellectual inputs too. I would modestly suggest only one of the authors to write the article, which would maintain consistency and flow, throughout. Once all this is done from your side, be sure of the journal's scope and upload your paper. Being a peer-reviewer myself, I would also look into the above stated points and try my best to encourage the author. Luckily, these days some journals have began maintaining anonymity of the author, which I feel is a boon and it would avoid a prejudiced process; The merit of your article would speak for itself. Stay calm and be prepared to provide a polite one - one response to the reviewers during subsequent revision processes. Patience is a major quality you will have to imbibe. Despite all this, if your article gets rejected, do not get disheartened and upload your article to another journal, having incorporated the suggestions given by the previous set of reviewers. Good luck !!!