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Key points
- Publishing research in peer reviewed scholarly journals is important, but challenging.
- Often the editorial process and what the editor wants are opaque.
- Establishing the value of the manuscript topic is the most important part of the paper.
Publications in peer-reviewed, refereed scholarly journals are the currency of academia. Tenure, promotions, grants, and professional reputations hinge on the number and quality of papers accepted for publication in these journals. Acceptance rates in high-impact, high-status journals range from 6% to 20% of all submissions. However, the process for having research articles accepted is opaque. Often, contributing authors have to guess what reviewers and journal editors want.
April 1, 2024, was my last day as editor-in-chief of a peer-reviewed, refereed scholarly journal. This five-year term was preceded by six years as editor of a different journal. After 11 years, it is time to retire as a journal editor. I have learned a lot in that time. Although I cannot speak for all editors, here are a few insights for authors to consider when preparing manuscripts for publication.
Editor Priorities
Editors have fears of plagiarism, authorship purchasing, data fraud, artificial intelligence-generated papers, and other issues that bring the credibility of the journal into question. The credibility of the journal is something all editors wish to protect. The most important remedy is to weigh the value of the paper above all else. Having no errors in analysis or design does not necessarily merit publication. Reviewers and I reject many well-designed and well-written papers where the value of the paper was not established. Colloquially—nice work, but it is not important. Establish value in the context of literature, theory, gaps in the knowledge base, or clinical practice. Focusing on effect sizes or statistical significance can easily be gamed. But a paper that is important to the field, asks useful questions, uses a strong and innovative research design, is open with data, and draws insightful conclusions is less likely to have major credibility issues.
Basic Considerations
The basics may appear overly simple, but ignoring them leads to a desk rejection. Spend the time and effort to ensure that the target journal is a good fit for your article. Ensuring a seamless fit of research methods, scope, intended readership, and implications of findings is worth the investment of time. Many authors complain about the time and energy required to format a manuscript according to the journal's requirements. Do it. Correct formatting is a signifier of professionalism. A carefully prepared manuscript indicates that the authors know what they are doing and casts a positive light on the paper. Papers not following formatting rules are sometimes accepted, but it is one more hurdle that authors do not need.
Follow the simple thread: Has the subject matter of the article been clearly established as important to theory, overall knowledge, or clinical practice? Do the research questions and hypotheses flow logically from this important subject matter? Do the methods and data analyses effectively answer the research questions and test the hypotheses? Do the conclusions and implications logically follow from the data and results? Are all of these components effectively communicated? These questions may seem simple, but failure to answer these questions and link the answers in a thread is the primary reason for manuscript rejection. Telling a story with each competent being clear and accurate is a key to publishing scholarly manuscripts.
I become skeptical when reading convoluted prose intended to impress with its literary flair. Settle down, Faulkner. Be clear, not fancy. Likewise, overselling a paper as cutting-edge, revolutionary, state-of-the-art, paradigm-shifting, or groundbreaking will not help. Relax a bit there, Niels Bohr. A good study that is well done sells itself.
A Few Tips
Measurement is a significant issue. This makes sense for me, as Jamie Algina and Linda Crocker were my professors. Remember that reliability is more than reporting a perfunctory coefficient alpha. Very short surveys, informal measures, choice of measures used, and newly developed measures will receive close scrutiny. Sensitivity and specificity are key issues on all measures that require explanation.
All articles with quantitative data receive a quick check before I send them to associate editors or reviewers. Simple checks include: Are the statical test results reported possible given the means and standard deviations reported? Is statistical power considered and addressed in some way? Are the distributions of data checked for violations of assumptions? Are quantitative approaches the best way to address the research questions?
Qualitative approaches require an established theory of data collection and analysis. Is the study truly qualitative? Are data reported fully and as completely as possible? And are qualitative approaches the best way to address the research questions?
Have data ready to share with the editor or reviewers. I requested data for four different articles that had massive and unexpected effect sizes, data in tables did not appear to match, or fits to models were too good to be true. Rather than send the data, all four submissions were withdrawn by the authors. In no case was the request to share data a violation of informed consent of the participants.
I never cared if a study yielded statistically significant results. An important and well-designed study is valuable no matter the result. However, stating that a paper is "approaching significance” or “would likely be statistically significant if the power were greater" is not the winning argument some authors might think. Moreover, statistical significance and significance (meaning importance) are not interchangeable.
Some papers are clearly part of a series of papers from a large data set. Reviewing a paper that is obviously a see-through slice of the salami is not inspiring. This is not automatically rejection-worthy, but there needs to be a clear case made that the current study exists as more than an exercise in p-hacking or HARKing (hypotheses after results are known).
Conclusions
Publishing in peer-reviewed scholarly journals is among the most important and difficult tasks for academics. Understanding a few of the quirks of the editorial process is an important part of the publishing. Editors want to help authors improve their work and are genuinely excited to read high-quality studies. A few considerations from an old editor can make the publication process slightly easier.
