In my experience, researchers fail in writing most often for not explaining their research question: What it is, why it is important, what was done previously by others and how it is now answered.

Many authors fail to give a short catchy title for the paper to reflect the content and a succinct abstract to summarize the research, in the first place.

Although some scientists are working on good research problems, due to various constraints like dead-lines and requests for progress from funding agencies, they are forced to publish the limited results they have obtained before digging deep into the research problems. Some authors are naturally papers-minded, thus even without any outside pressure for publications, they are inclined to publish limited results loaded with plenty of speculations. Both scenarios end-up in failures as they are unable to make a strong case.

Dear Kenneth,

Thanks for your answer. Since you have published both in Nature and Science, the authors would be pleased to hear from a person like you, how you were successful? Any suggestions and advise you give will be tremendously helpful to those who intend to publish in those two prestigious journals.

Keerthi

Only a few reviewers make constructive comments with proper directions to the authors to revise and make significant improvements to the scientific content and language of a paper. Some reviewers disagree on the scientific content of a paper, but do not elaborate enough on those to make the author/s understand what they expect the author/s to do to improve a paper. Some reviewers and editors are terrible that they only use ‘No’s to show their disagreement, but never explains ‘why not?’ It is the inability to understand and assess the weight of the disagreements of the latter two categories of reviewers that makes many authors to fail. Unfortunately, it is for the failures of the reviewers that authors have to pay with their valuable times and efforts.

The reasons why articles submitted to journals get rejected are manifold, and include:

- poor quality science

- poorly-constructed manuscript

- poor quality language (usually English)

- poorly-marketed good science

- out of the journal scope

Put yourself in the position of a journal editor who has a publishing house sitting (metaphorically) on his/her shoulders wanting to increase the journal's impact factor to attract wider readership. The editor needs to decide whether a particular submitted manuscript is likely to increase the journal's impact factor or not. So, assuming that the science is good quality (poor science being a major reason for manuscript rejection), then the author(s) need to "sell" their research to the journal.

Publishing in good quality journals is a competitive market. Therefore, your approach should be, in essence, a marketing campaign to make sure that your research is presented as attractively as possible to the editor and reviewers. In that way, your research will compete more effectively for selection by the editor.

Two major aspects of your manuscript will have a major impact on a journal editor, who will then decide whether to send your manuscript out for review or not. The first, as already stated, is the quality of the Abstract which has to tell a good story (from beginning to end) clearly but succinctly.

The second is your Introduction, which needs to establish a suitable research question (also already stated in answers), and then to make clear to the editor and reviewers why the research was needed and the increase in understanding/knowledge it will provide.

Too often I find myself saying "Boring, boring!" or "Not another manuscript on the same subject!" as I read the Introduction for a scientific paper. If an editor says that about your manuscript, then it is unlikely to be accepted for publication!

Note, however, that your manuscript is very unlikely to be rejected because they don't like you or don't like where you come from!

Your question was a good one and worthwhile asking, though the answers will be many and complex!

Steve

as one can see already from the few comments above, there is not a single reason why authors fail in publishing tehir papers. in my experience teaching science communication for a number of years at our university, being editor/associate editor for a number of international journals, and acting as reviewer for more than 40 yournals, i would say that there are several reasons why we fail - and we all fail, at least from time to time

i will assume that methodology and science is correct and done properly

reasons from most to least important why we fail:

1. we do not tell story - we should tell why and what we did

2. we do not dig into topic and existing literature deeply enough

3. we lack recognising deficineies and limitations of our approach

if we get this things right and use simple english, understandable to all (also non-native speakers) we will have better chance of publishing our papers

if you are at the beginning of your scientific carrier go to meeting the editor sessions at conferences or look at presentations of editors like this one at videolectures.net by Jos A E Spaan

http://videolectures.net/medicon07_spaan_wam/

if you are already established just remind yourself from time to time the above suggestions

and target appropriate journal for your research. not everything can be published in Science and Nature

Here's a figure (slightly modified for this discussion topic) that I use in my lectures on scientific writing. As they say, a picture can paint a thousand words! [However, I'm ashamed to say my latest publication got accepted with over 15000 of them - too many!]

Steve

Dear Steve and Damijan, I agree with both of you that the answer to this question is manifold, and thank you very much for your valuable contributions. The whole idea of the question is to bring all those different aspects onto one platform for discussion.

Just a brief comment on the liguistic perspective. It is quite effective that students (specially Non-Native English Speakers) write their purpose by selecting the fittest verb that describes exactly what their research is about. They can get a tremendous help by using an ENglish-English thesaurus; then, they need to confirm their intended meaning in an Oxford (English-English) Dictionary, to be sure that they are in the right semantic direction. Then, in the same sentence, they have to mention the technique, method or tool that they used along their research. An example is as follows: DESCRIBES a comprehensive characterization of fungal metabolites BY MEANS OF THE ACTIVE EXTRACT OF AN ENDOPHYTIC FUNGUS BIOASSAY GUIDED FRACTIONATION. Certainly, they have to read the Authors instructions that the journal commonly provides in its web page in order to avoid sending unwanetd papers. I completely agreed to what was previously mention by doctors Kennedy, Towe and Quarrie.

The most important part of a paper is its discussion. That is where people (both editors and readers) pass a judgment on you. But before coming into the discussion, in your introduction to the scientific problem and in your summary of previous work, one has to give a brief account on the present understanding of the problem and how various people looked into it and made inferences, evaluated, and interpreted relevant data. Your own observations and data are your 'weapons' and what you summarized in the introduction and under previous work are your 'ammunition' to win the 'battle' - the discussion. You win (editors accept your paper) and readers judge that you are a good scientist and made a significant contribution to science, if you made a scientifically logical, balanced discussion taking into consideration views that are both in agreement and in disagreement with you. If you are unbalanced and biased by your own data and view points (the weapons) and are neglecting others views and data (no ammunition) that particularly go strongly against you, you have lost the battle. Your paper could be rejected. Even if you 'win', accepted by a non-professional editor, you are 'seriously wounded', the learned readers pass judgment on you. You are a 'disabled soldier' - not a good scientist.