RSC Advances Blog

Why did in-house editors reject my paper? 

From the perspective of two staff editors at RSC Advances

Research papers submitted to RSC Advances are subject to initial quality checks by in-house editors before they are passed on to our expert Associate Editors for assessment.  This week we are going to take a peek behind the curtain of the editing team at RSC Advances and see how in-house editors reject papers that do not meet the journal’s criteria.

Editors first check whether a manuscript is within the scope of the journal as described on the journal website. Papers published in RSC Advances must present insights that advance the chemistry field or be of interest to chemists.  Most of the manuscripts we reject for being out of scope may contain some chemistry (for example, a chemical compound used as a drug or for drug delivery) but with the primary scientific advance in a different field such as pharmacology, statistics, genetics, etc. Manuscripts that are out of the scope of the journal are rejected without peer-review no matter how sound the science is.

Once editors are satisfied that the paper fits within the scope of the journal, we go through your manuscript to ensure that all relevant and correct documents for submission are present. All our experimental data reporting requirements can be found online. The emails we most frequently send as editors are those requesting authors for supporting data as what was supplied did not meet our requirements. We cannot publish papers where the data provided does not meet our data standards. For example, all Western blot and other electrophoresis data should be supported by the underlying uncropped and unprocessed raw images, all new small molecule crystal data must be present in the  CIF (Crystallographic Information File) format, etc.

Burlington House, London (Headquarters of the Royal Society of Chemistry)

In addition, do keep in mind good publishing practices and follow the ethical guidelines that we have listed on our Author hub. Key points to keep in mind are:

1. Make sure you address the scope of the paper in your cover letter or in your bibliography by citing previous work from the same journal and/or similar journals.
2. Use your own words to describe previous work and experiments, and make that sure all your references are correct.
3. Avoid making unsupported claims about your findings and provide all data supporting your findings either in the main paper or in the Electronic Supplementary Information. The Royal Society of Chemistry also strongly encourages authors to deposit the data underpinning their research in appropriate repositories.
4. Only submit your manuscript to one journal at a time.

Thomas Graham House, Cambridge (where Royal Society of Chemistry Publishing is based)

If your paper has already been peer-reviewed at another Royal Society of Chemistry journal, please make sure to address the previous reviewer comments and revise the paper before submitting it to RSC Advances (and preferably include the point-by-point response to the previous referee comments as well). We feel that it is very important that the time and efforts of our reviewers are duly acknowledged in this manner, and this process should also help to improve the quality of work published in our journals. Be firm yet diplomatic in your responses to referee comments (even if the referees are confrontational).  There is nothing to be gained in responding aggressively, even if you are sure you are right.  Even if the referee reports are very negative, your paper may still be accepted if the Editor is convinced by your rebuttal letter.

In-house editors support external expert Associate Editors in their handling of papers, but we also support authors too. If you have any queries about data or scope pre- or post- submission of your paper, please do get in touch with the journal and we will be happy to help.

We hope that we have provided some clarity about why in-house editors at RSC Advances reject papers and what can be done to avoid this in any future submissions!

Tune in next week for interviews with three of our Associate Editors where they discuss their most common reasons for rejecting manuscripts and reveal their best publishing tips!

You are welcome to send in any questions you have about peer-review or publishing to advances-rsc@rsc.org or post them on Twitter @RSCAdvances #AdvancingWithAdvances.

Why did the editor reject my manuscript? 

Guest post by Professor Robert Baker, Trinity College Dublin

Most of the readers of this blog are driven by curiosity. The question “why?” is something we have at the forefront of our scientific endeavours. Why did this reaction give black insoluble gunk? Why is the reaction yield 5% (rounded up)? Some of the more interesting results have come from questioning the “why?” of failed reactions – Vaska’s complex was discovered by accident, Kubas discovered the first dihydrogen complexes because of a poor yield, and there are many more examples from all branches of chemistry.  Then we spend ages analysing the data; “why?” did the NMR spectrum have too many peaks. After that we put all the answers to our “why?” on paper and send it to a journal for peer review. But how many times do we receive the following email from an editor rejecting our carefully crafted manuscript?

“ Dear author,

Thank you for your recent submission to RSC Advances, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. All manuscripts are initially assessed by the editors to ensure they meet the criteria for publication in the journal.

After careful evaluation of your manuscript, I regret to inform you that I do not find your manuscript suitable for publication in RSC Advances because it does not meet the novelty and impact requirements of the journal. Therefore your article has been rejected from RSC Advances.

Yours sincerely,

The Editor”

Professor Robert James Baker is an Assistant Professor at the School of Chemistry, Trinity College Dublin and an Associate Editor as well as Editorial Board member of RSC Advances

In this series we will explore some of the pitfalls of submission from an editor’s point of view and move your science forward. From experience, some of the common problems revolve around cover letters, how the manuscript is presented and how to respond to referees’ comments – “why” did they not get it? “why” didn’t I think of that?

Later on in this blog series, I will be sharing some of the cover letters and reviewer responses that accompanied rejected as well as successful manuscripts that I authored (and the stories behind them) in order to highlight that not only manuscripts require to be revised. As an Associate Editor in the areas of spectroscopy, homogenous catalysis and inorganic chemistry at RSC Advances, I come across several manuscripts with cover letters in the following format:

“Dear Editor:

 Here we submit the paper entitled “XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX”. We would be grateful if the manuscript could be reviewed and considered for publication in RSC Advances. Thank you for your kind consideration.

Signed- The authors”

Such redundant cover letters do not help the cause of the manuscript. At the very minimum, the cover letter should clearly state the advance made to literature in a manner that helps editors and reviewers evaluate the manuscript.

Here are my:

Most common reasons for rejecting a manuscript without review?

1. Does the introduction set the scene – what is the problem the authors are looking at and why is it different to the literature. Context is key. So very short introductions with few references to the state-of-the-art are not good.
2. Remember it is a results AND discussion section on a discussion of YOUR results. Again context – are your results good, bad or indifferent?
3. Does the introduction and conclusion match the results? It is surprising how many manuscripts give a very ‘templated’ introduction on results from the last paper and not this current one.

Best piece of advice to a submitting author?

You are telling a story of WHY your results are important. Lead the reviewer and reader by the hand, explain everything that is important, but do it succinctly. The reader of your article wants to learn something new, so tell them what is new.

Having a manuscript rejected by an editor or peer reviewers is sometimes tough to take, especially in the early stages of your career. It’s frustrating and annoying but it happens to everyone; the comments are on your work, not you as a person or scientist. The best (though not necessarily easiest) way to look at it is as a learning experience. For example, I submitted a manuscript early in my career with the elemental analysis mixed up between two compounds; a referee picked up on this and the whole report was:

“The bulk purity of the compounds has not been proven, therefore none of the conclusions are remotely valid. Reject.”

I have not made the same mistake again!

You are welcome to send in any questions you have about peer-review or publishing to advances-rsc@rsc.org or post them on Twitter @RSCAdvances #AdvancingWithAdvances.

Tune in next week for our feature on how manuscripts are rejected by professional editors on scope and/or data concerns!