Reasons for Manuscript Rejection at Internal and Peer-review Stages

Souhail Adib, Vahid Nimehchisalem

Abstract


The noble aim of publishing an article is to drive the wheel of scientific research forward; pragmatically speaking, though, and that is the case of many authors, a publication is a set criterion for their graduation or promotion. When publishing an article is mentioned, authors tend to contemplate rejection. Some fear rejection to the point of refraining from drafting the manuscript. To identify the most common reasons why submissions are rejected, internally by the journal editors (also referred to as preview or screening stage), and externally by the blind reviewers, we analysed the preview and review comments of 100 rejected submissions to the International Journal of Education and literacy Studies (IJELS) in the period between 2018 and 2020. The results of inductive thematic analysis indicated that the main reasons why submissions were rejected at the preview stage were problems with originality, poor language, scope, format, and organization. At the review stage, the main reasons were methodology, organization, language, insignificance, and literature review. Additionally, other less common reasons why manuscripts were rejected were that they lacked clear and conventional result reports, in-depth discussions, and thick conclusions, relevant, current, and impactful references among others to be discussed in this article. Many of these issues are, of course, fixable and future authors are highly encouraged to go through this paper and treat it as a guideline that will improve the quality of their manuscripts, and therefore, they will stand higher chances of acceptance.

Keywords


Manuscript Submission Guidelines, Publication, Reasons, Rejection, Revie

Full Text:

PDF

References


Dogra S. (2011). Why your manuscript was rejected and how to prevent it. Indian J Dermatol Venereol Leprol, 77(2), 123-7. doi: 10.4103/0378-6323.77449. PMID: 21393939.

Fink, A. (2014). Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper (4th ed.). SAGE. Retrieved from https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/literaturereview

Kibret, B. A. (2017). Why are manuscripts unacceptable for publication? An analysis of Ethiopian Journal of Education (EJE) rejections. Educational Research and Reviews, 12(2), 83-93.

Kim, S., Petru, M., Gielecki, J., & Loukas, M. (2020). Causes of Manuscript Rejection and How to Handle a Rejected Manuscript. Shoja, M., et al. A Guide to the Scientific Career: Virtues, Communication, Research, and Academic Writing, First Edition. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Kotsis, SV & Chung, K. C. (2014). Manuscript rejection: how to submit a revision and tips on being a good peer reviewer. Plast Reconstr Surg., 133(4), 958-964. doi: 10.1097/PRS.0000000000000002

Pierson, D. J. (2004). The top 10 reasons why manuscripts are not accepted for publication. Respir Care, 49(10), 1246-52.

Shibayama, S. & Wang, J. (2020). Measuring originality in science. Scientometrics, 122, 409–427 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03263-0

Wyness, T., McGhee, C. N., & Patel, D. V. (2009). Manuscript rejection in ophthalmology and visual science journals: identifying and avoiding the common pitfalls. Clin Exp Ophthalmol, 37(9), 864-7. doi: 10.1111/j.1442-9071.2009.02190.x




DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijels.v.9n.3p.2

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.




Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

2013-2024 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD.

International Journal of Education and Literacy Studies  

You may require to add the 'aiac.org.au' domain to your e-mail 'safe list’ If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox'. Otherwise, you may check your 'Spam mail' or 'junk mail' folders.