You can’t publish everything, and rejection is part of the system.
But this doesn’t mean that all rejections are the same, nor does it mean that you have to handle them all in the same way.
Because submissions are different, rejections can be different as well.
But what kinds of rejections are there, and how do you implement them?
Here we’ll go over the different types of rejections and how you can approach them
Different types of rejections
In academic publishing, you’re going to be getting different submissions. Sometimes, these submissions are exactly what you’re looking for. They meet the criteria, they fall under the scope of your journal, and the research in the work is solid. But that won’t always be the case. Sometimes, you’ll need to reject submissions. Here are a few reasons why:
- Out of scope rejections;
- Fails to meet submission guidelines;
- Needs more work;
- Work is suspect.
Knowing which of the rejections you’ll need to apply will help you in communication. In addition, having clear guidelines about what rejection is handled in what way can help you train your staff more effectively.
Out of scope rejections
This is the easiest rejection to identify and handle. When a submission simply doesn’t match your journal’s scope, this would be considered an out of scope submission. Generally, a template for this sort of email is sufficient. Make sure that your template is clear, however.
You want to make sure that your template explains the scope of your journal clearly, so that the submitting authors understand why their submission was rejected. While you may receive follow up communications from the submitting author, these tend to be uncommon.
Keep in mind that authors might ask you for suggestions of where they might be able to submit their work. Handling this is tricky. Make sure that you’re not devoting a lot of resources towards answering these questions. Knowing what journals to submit to is the author’s responsibility.
If you can help them though, you should. Your reputation can benefit from this sort of effort.
Fails to meet submission guidelines
We’ve talked about the importance of screening guidelines before. Included in that discussion was knowing when to be flexible, and when not to be.
If a submission does not meet the submission guidelines, this could be something that is easily addressed—but it could also be something significant. Formatting issues might be minor issues that you’re willing to overlook. Missing a references section, on the other hand, is a major and significant problem when it comes time to do your due diligence. Make sure that your team understands the different cases. There can be a lot of nuance in what “fails to meet submission guidelines”, so make sure your team is aware of your expectations.
Needs more work
Not quite as serious as failing to meet submission guidelines, when a submission requires more work, you can inform the authors of this.
As an example, if a submission doesn’t have formatting applied, you might want to return the work to the authors and inform them of this. This sort of rejection can be considered a “tentative rejection”.
The authors are able to resubmit the manuscript, but they do need to take care of specific issues to ensure that they meet the minimum expectations for your team to work with. As noted above (and as we’ve discussed previously) there can be a lot of nuance in this and you need to decide how important/critical different cases will be.
Just make sure that when you’re returning work to authors so that they can take care of specific issues, that you list all the things that need to be addressed. You do not want to get involved in a protracted back and forth because you forgot to mention other critical issues. Remember to make sure that your team is thorough.
Work is suspect
This particular category is really important.
Not everyone in the world of academic publishing is a good-faith actor. Sometimes, people will attempt to plagiarize the work of others.
While there are a few different things that could be “suspect” how you act on it matters. Many companies opt to keep a blacklist to make sure that when bad actors are found, that they are unable to cause issues in the future.
Armed with knowledge of how to address the different types of rejections, you can move forward confidently, knowing that your team is ready to ensure that your journal is setting itself up for success.