Hi, Milliam,

As you have discovered, there is a fairly high level of idiosyncrasy in the peer review process. In my field I have noted that editors do define their roles quite differently from one journal to another. Some understand their role to include an initial screening of submissions in order not to overburden their reviewers with manuscripts the editor assesses as unsuitable. Others quickly submit everything to peer review, but assume something of a final decision-maker in the process by sometimes overruling peer reviews. Others accept the peer reviews as authoritative.

As you gain more experience in the publishing process, you will get a feel for the approach different editors take and will be able to direct your manuscripts to those more likely to give it a fair review.

I do want to applaud your response to your first rejection. There is really no reason to revise a manuscript that you believe in just because it is rejected - especially if that rejection is not from blind peer reviewers. Every time a manuscript is resubmitted to another journal, some degree of editing is probably advisable to make sure that the manuscript complies with the instruction for authors and journal style/purpose, but extensive revisions for a rejection are largely a waste of time. Wait until you receive some version of "revise and resubmit" before laboring over review notes. My writing mentor used to say, "When you have 10 rejections, then it may be time to revise." Keeping a manuscript under review is the best way to eventually become published.

Finally, I think the expectation of presenting at a conference is more likely in closely-knit disciplines with relative few conference opportunities. In others, there is really no need to do this unless you believe that it is possible to obtain feedback that will improve the quality of your work.

Thank you very much Mr. Peter A Kindle. It is an honour to learn from you and your mentor through your response.

Thanks Milliam for sharing your experience, though it was a challenge, however, many of us face similar issues every now and then.

As Peter explained it so well, there are many variations among journal editors, and eventually it is this variability that gives the flavors of scientific literature!

Your best bet is, as you did, prepare your Plan B and Plan C if it was not accepted in the first attempt.

Again, prepare for the worst and hope for the best!

Best wishes to all,

Thank you very much for the advice Mr Mohamad-Hani Temsah .

I agree with Peter A Kindle

Having been the editor of two different journals I can tell you that some of what happens is just related to the amount of time the editor has when you happen to submit. I always tried to get things moving quickly upon submission, but sometimes I was busy and it might take me a couple of weeks to get back to looking at submissions and making decisions about whether to put them into the peer review process. Being the editor of a journal is quite time consuming, particularly if you do not have much administrative help. I was fortunate enough to have that help, but it was still time consuming.

There is no requirement that you present at a conference. However, doing so can help to improve the quality of what you do submit to journals, so that increases the chances of getting it reviewed and potentially accepted.

Another thing to keep in mind is that editors rely on the voluntary participation of reviewers. If I felt that a paper was either not appropriate for the journal or needed more work, I would not send it to reviewers, because I did not want to waste their time. And I'm depending on them to be willing to review manuscripts, so if I waste their time, they will stop doing it. Editors walk a very narrow tightrope with these things.

Peter gives some very good advice. Keep sending it until you get a revise and resubmit. Do not be discouraged by rejections--it's normal.

These are aspects that I didn't have in mind. Thank you very much, sir J. W. Traphagan, for that clarification.

There are some excellent responses above, but do consider whether you paper is as good as it can be prior to submitting it anywhere to increase your chances of success – the review process can be so time consuming that an extra day of polishing is time well spent. The editor or journal staff will take an initial decision on whether to ask a board member to assess a paper (say a couple of days, probably), the board member will then take a few minutes during the next couple of weeks to decide whether to pass the paper on for review or not. If the review process is to begin, another couple of months might be required for the reviews to come in, and there you have your time-frames.

If you cannot convince the editor and reviewer to pass your work on, it could be rejected at either of the initial stages, or it might be passed on and eventually accepted.

Some thoughts:

• Consider whether there is anything that you can do to stimulate in-depth consideration of your paper by the first, second and every person who looks at it to make a decision on the review!

The first step is to make sure that there are no obvious reasons to reject the paper:

• Ask someone with a good command of English to check the abstract, introduction and conclusions for comprehensibility – if these cannot be understood, a reviewer is likely to be frustrated!
• Ask a colleague to read the paper and identify any places where the work might be improved prior to submission. (As PhD students in Sweden, we used to present papers in seminars for group discussion prior to publication.)
• I would always ask someone who is not familiar with your work to take a quick look to make sure that you have not failed to state the obvious – have you explained the purpose of the work, for instance? If you cannot explain why you embarked on the investigation, the significance of the results or present a serious argument to justify the research (a technological breakthrough is urgently needed, for instance), your work will come across as pointless to the reader – and your readers include those making the decision about whether to publish.
• You could check a few published papers in your target journal to make sure that the standard of your work is as good as that of the papers accepted and published, and also to check whether the scope of the journal corresponds with the work being presented.
• I would suggest that you avoid sending a manuscript to a publishing house whose journals repeatedly reject your papers. The first thing the journal staff see is the authors' publishing records. A row of rejections showing up on the system they use to manage the workflow is unlikely to create a positive response.
• If you have had a paper – or several – rejected by your preferred journal recently, include an explanation of why this work deserves special attention. You might even say that you were very disappointed that your earlier paper was rejected [without review/post review] and that you hope to receive good feedback from reviewers this time leading to success on this important work....

One often reads that breakthrough research had a troublesome path to publication

Thank you for these relevant tips that will probably enlighten me the next time Mrs. Suzy Lidstrom