Desk Rejection Research Articles

Why is your paper rejected? Lessons learned from over 5000 rejected transportation papers

Academic papers are the cornerstone of knowledge dissemination and crucial for researchers’ career development. This is particularly true for rapidly evolving research domains such as transportation, as evidenced by the surge of journals and papers in the past decade. While abundant literature offers guidance on successful publication strategies, insights into the reasons for rejection are rare. This study fills in this gap by examining why papers are rejected in the area of transportation. We present concrete evidence based on data from over 5,000 rejected transport papers. Quantitative analyses are conducted to reveal the impacts of similarity rate, duplication submission rate, and topic on desk rejections. Additionally, we shed light on the distinct focus reviewers have when serving different journals. We hope the results could equip transport researchers with a deeper comprehension of publication criteria and a better awareness of common but avoidable mistakes.

Idea to Ink: Lessons From Failure to Publish

Writing and publishing are critical components of an academic career. For many years however, my idealized notions of scholarly writing were demolished by painful and traumatic attempts to publish. The significant time and effort poured into crafting an academic article yielded desk rejection after desk rejection, at times unkind and unhelpful reviews, and a growing pile of unsent manuscripts gathering cyber dust in deliberately forgotten archived folders. I was both astounded and relieved at the discovery that I was not alone in my frustration. So, I turned my academic publishing failure into a subject of research. In this essay, I reflect on what it means to be a scholar and share the lessons I learned about the common blind spots that often lead to a failure to publish. Using management education scholarship as an example, I break down my writing process into stages, identify pitfalls at each stage, and describe the writing guardrails I put in place to keep my academic manuscript drafts on track. I share these lessons not from a place of exceptional success but from a place of failure, recognizing that lessons from many unsuccessful attempts offer equally important insights into what it means to succeed.

Paying reviewers and regulating the number of papers may help fix the peer-review process

The exponential increase in the number of submissions, further accelerated by generative AI, and the decline in the availability of experts are burdening the peer review process. This has led to high unethical desk rejection rates, a growing appeal for the publication of unreviewed preprints, and a worrying proliferation of predatory journals. The idea of monetarily compensating peer reviewers has been around for many years; maybe, it is time to take it seriously as one way to save the peer review process. Here, I argue that paying reviewers, when done in a fair and transparent way, is a viable solution. Like the case of professional language editors, part-time or full-time professional reviewers, managed by universities or for-profit companies, can be an integral part of modern peer review. Being a professional reviewer could be financially attractive to retired senior researchers and to researchers who enjoy evaluating papers but are not motivated to do so for free. Moreover, not all produced research needs to go through peer review, and thus persuading researchers to limit submissions to their most novel and useful research could also help bring submission volumes to manageable levels. Overall, this paper reckons that the problem is not the peer review process per se but rather its function within an academic ecosystem dominated by an unhealthy culture of ‘publish or perish’. Instead of reforming the peer review process, academia has to look for better science dissemination schemes that promote collaboration over competition, engagement over judgement, and research quality and sustainability over quantity.

Paying reviewers and regulating the number of papers may help fix the peer-review process

The exponential increase in the number of submissions, further accelerated by generative AI, and the decline in the availability of experts are burdening the peer review process. This has led to high unethical desk rejection rates, a growing appeal for the publication of unreviewed preprints, and a worrying proliferation of predatory journals. The idea of monetarily compensating peer reviewers has been around for many years; maybe, it is time to take it seriously as one way to save the peer review process. Here, I argue that paying reviewers, when done in a fair and transparent way, is a viable solution. Like the case of professional language editors, part-time or full-time professional reviewers, managed by universities or for-profit companies, can be an integral part of modern peer review. Being a professional reviewer could be financially attractive to retired senior researchers and to researchers who enjoy evaluating papers but are not motivated to do so for free. Moreover, not all produced research needs to go through peer review, and thus persuading researchers to limit submissions to their most novel and useful research could also help bring submission volumes to manageable levels. Overall, this paper reckons that the problem is not the peer review process per se but rather its function within an academic ecosystem dominated by an unhealthy culture of ‘publish or perish’. Instead of reforming the peer review process, academia has to look for better science dissemination schemes that promote collaboration over competition, engagement over judgement, and research quality and sustainability over quantity.

От редактора: Следуя инструкциям журнала или как избежать отказа на этапе предварительного рассмотрения

When a new manuscript is submitted, the editorial team of Education and Self Development carries out a preliminary assessment and checks it for compliance with the journal guidelines. In case of successful initial check, the manuscript is sent out for peer review. Unfortunately, the percentage of papers that are rejected by editors prior to review is quite high. In this editorial I want to discuss why it happens and how to avoid a desk reject. One of the key reasons for rejecting a paper is inconsistency with the Journal’s scope. When such cases occur, we realise that an author has not done the groundwork and has not read the journal aims. Before submitting a manuscript, authors must visit a journal website, get familiar with its mission, identify the target audience, learn about the submission process, and even read through some published works. It is highly recommended to select a target journal reasonably in advance, and this choice should be solely based on the scope of a journal. The second ground for rejection is when a manuscript does not follow journal guidelines. As with the scope, submission guidelines can be found on the journal website. I should point out that instructions for authors who are interested in submitting their works to Education and Self Development are available on our website in the tab ‘Submit an article’ (Author guidelines).

Editorial: Following author guidelines or how to avoid desk rejection

При поступлении новой статьи редакция журнала «Образование и саморазвитие» рассматривает материал на соответствие определенным критериям. В случае успешного прохождения первого этапа рукопись направляется на рецензирование. К сожалению, процент статей, которые отсеиваются редакторской командой, довольно высокий. Из-за чего это происходит и как избежать отказа на предварительном этапе рассмотрим в данной редакторской статье. Одна из очевидных причин, по которой статьи не допускаются до рецензирования – это несоответствие научной сфере журнала. Когда редакция сталкивается с подобными случаями, это свидетельствует о том, что автор не провел подготовительную работу и не ознакомился с целями и задачами журнала. Перед подачей материала обязательно изучите сайт научного издания, ознакомьтесь с миссией журнала, узнайте его целевую аудиторию, посмотрите опубликованные статьи. Работу по подбору журнала рекомендуем начинать заблаговременно, и при выборе важно ориентироваться исключительно на тематику. Второе основание для отказа – несоответствие требованиям журнала к структуре и содержанию статьи. Как и с тематическим профилем, файл с требованиями можно найти на сайте журнала. Напоминаю, что рекомендации для авторов по подготовке и оформлению статей в журнал «Образование и саморазвитие» размещены на сайте во вкладке «Подать статью» (Информация для авторов).

How to avoid a desk reject: do’s and don’ts

How to avoid a desk reject: do’s and don’ts

Paying reviewers and regulating the number of papers may help fix the peer-review process.

The exponential increase in the number of submissions, further accelerated by generative AI, and the decline in the availability of experts are burdening the peer review process. This has led to high unethical desk rejection rates, a growing appeal for the publication of unreviewed preprints, and a worrying proliferation of predatory journals. The idea of monetarily compensating peer reviewers has been around for many years; maybe, it is time to take it seriously as one way to save the peer review process. Here, I argue that paying reviewers, when done in a fair and transparent way, is a viable solution. Like the case of professional language editors, part-time or full-time professional reviewers, managed by universities or for-profit companies, can be an integral part of modern peer review. Being a professional reviewer could be financially attractive to retired senior researchers and to researchers who enjoy evaluating papers but are not motivated to do so for free. Moreover, not all produced research needs to go through peer review, and thus persuading researchers to limit submissions to their most novel and useful research could also help bring submission volumes to manageable levels. Overall, this paper reckons that the problem is not the peer review process per se but rather its function within an academic ecosystem dominated by an unhealthy culture of 'publish or perish'. Instead of reforming the peer review process, academia has to look for better science dissemination schemes that promote collaboration over competition, engagement over judgement, and research quality and sustainability over quantity.

Exploring nominalization and lexical density deployed within research article abstracts: A grammatical metaphor analysis

In research articles published for international reputable journals, the crucial role of abstracts to attract readers, especially reviewers or editors, is not in doubt. The article is expected to not experience direct desk rejection due to non-impressive and persuasive lexical choices in the abstract for further reading. This paper proposes a corpus study to scrutinize ideational grammatical metaphor (IGM) from the abstracts of successfully published articles in four applied linguistic quality indexed Scopus journals (Q1 and Q2) managed by Asian countries. The data were analyzed based on Halliday’s SFL framework focused on the realization of IGM in nominalization and lexical density. The pattern of IGM examined was on the transference of process and quality nominalization through morphological derivations. The findings show that the shift from process to thing dominates the other with many variations of suffixes within the words. In addition, the abstracts’ lexical density results ranged from 45 to 72 percent. Thus, it is suggested that English teachers consider raising students’ awareness of nominalization to produce lexically dense but informative texts in their academic writing classes.

Questioning editors who blame COVID-19 for their editorial failures

The Covid-19 pandemic has provided an opportunity to appreciate how delays in medical treatments can negatively impact the healthcare of patients in need. However, not much – if anything – has been researched on how the pandemic has been used as an excuse within professional settings. In this letter, I take note of a personal case in which an editor of a ranked and indexed medical journal, having taken four months to issue a desk rejection, promptly blamed Covid-19 for the journal’s editorial failures, without providing proof of this claim. Currently, editors who issue such statements cannot be held accountable, and the system of publication needs to change in order to prevent editors from making such ludicrous claims without publicly verifiable evidence. Absent concrete measures to safe-guard authors’ rights to know why their papers’ intellect has been held up for so long, they become victims of a system that offers unprecedented unchecked powers to editors.

Inaugural Editorial

It is a great pleasure for me to provide an editorial commentary for the first edition of the recently established Journal of Optics and Photonics Research (JOPR). Greetings and salutations to all of you on the inaugural issue of JOPR, a new and exciting portfolio journal from Bon View Publishing, which focuses on cutting-edge research trends in optics and photonics. The journal features international peer-reviewed multidisciplinary papers that provide new and original insights to the field, while maintaining accuracy in theory and technology. We are committed to ensuring that every accepted article meets these standards. Being the Editor-in-Chief of JOPR is an honor and a source of great gratitude for me. The fields of optics and photonics are primarily concerned with the study of light, its creation, and manipulation, as well as its interactions with gases, plasmas, molecules, and solids, including micro- and nanostructures. The optical domain of ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light is much surpassed by the electromagnetic spectrum covered by optics and photonics. Researchers from physics, chemical and biological engineering, electronic and electrical engineering, and other fields are involved in this highly multidisciplinary topic. JOPR draws on both theoretical and practical results in the field of optical science and engineering, without being limited to any one discipline. It is committed to a wide spectrum of fundamental and applied optical research and brings scientists from many domains together. We encourage authors to conduct interdisciplinary research through the application of reasonable modeling or computational methods and experimental analysis. My goal for JOPR is to create a premier, open-access, highly peer-reviewed platform whose goal is to publish the most significant research in photonics and optics. I'm appreciative of the community's tremendous support in assisting us in achieving this objective.

Artificial Intelligence and Project Management: Empirical Overview, State of the Art, and Guidelines for Future Research

Desk rejections of artificial intelligence (AI)–related submissions to the Project Management Journal® (PMJ) are high. This article provides an overview and state-of-the-art snapshot on academic and practitioner work to derive at potential future research topics and guidelines on the execution and reporting of AI-related studies in project management.

Has the Feminist Economics Intellectual Project Lost its Way? An Analysis of the Journal’s Evolution

This article analyzes the methodologies, scope, and impact of manuscripts submitted to and published in Feminist Economics from 1995 to 2019. The analysis finds that in addition to becoming increasingly empirical, Feminist Economics publications have also become increasingly intersectional. However, quantitative empirical submissions, relative to other methodological approaches, are more likely to be desk rejected and less likely to be eventually published if they proceed to peer review. The increasing attention to gender in the mainstream of the economics discipline, proxied by the prevalence of gender analyses in the discipline’s top thirty journals, is also associated with increased desk rejection, reflecting a rise in submissions that take a mainstream “add gender and stir” approach. Ultimately, this study aims to understand how feminist economics has evolved since the inception of the journal and to spark conversation about how to continue to make the journal and economics more feminist in the future. HIGHLIGHTS Publications in Feminist Economics have become increasingly intersectional. Non-empirical work has been favored in the publication process. Special issue articles garner more citations on average. Intersectional articles garner fewer citations on average. More “gender” papers lacking feminist engagement have been submitted over time.

Inaugural Editorial

Writing an editorial note for the first volume of the new journal of Archives of Advanced Engineering Science (AAES) is a great glory and honor for me. The scope of AAES is not limited to a single aspect of engineering and science and covers various subfields in the applied and fundamental engineering sciences. Particularly, articles with interdisciplinary nature are welcomed. A warm welcome to the inaugural issue of AAES, which is a new exciting title and subject for Bon View Press portfolio journals for 2023. AAES is a new beginning for engineering development in the way to advanced engineering science. I am fortunate and honored to be a member of AAES and take the responsibility of Editor-in-Chief. As can be witnessed in journal title, this pioneering journal aims to address and understand Engineering Science. Subject fields include, but are not limited to, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Informatics Engineering, Civil Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Material Engineering, Computer Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Renewable Energy and Resources, Technology and Applications, Sustainable Development and Interdisciplinary science. Today, we feel great happiness to publish the first issue of our journal in November 2023. This issue has six articles on different interesting topics in engineering science. I believe that AAES is providing a vigorously open-access, peer-reviewed, leading platform aiming at publishing the most valuable and Influential research works in the main basic areas of engineering science around the world. To enhance the standard of the journal through publishing high quality papers, we followed the main practices of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and accordingly handled research and publication misconduct. Strict ethical guidelines for editors, authors, and peer reviewers were clearly presented. We introduced desk reject, double-blind peer-review by at least two anonymous reviewers and plagiarism detection to guarantee high standards of AAES.

Reflections

In this, the third issue of the Journal in 2023, Reflections considers the return of ‘correspondence’ with a discussion between Charles Bamforth and Ricardo Fritzsche regarding Charlie’s Provocation review from earlier this year. In the last century (!), ‘correspondence’ or ‘Letter to the Editor’ was a regular feature in JIB. Rather more contemporary is the use of Google Analytics to analyse website traffic. Whilst a rich source of data, the wheat needs sorting from the chaff. The numbers are interesting and will become more so over time. In terms of visitors to https://jib.ibd.org.uk/index.php/jib, they are from 90 countries with three quarters coming from 10 countries. Continuing the ‘numbers’ theme, there are four KPIs which capture steps from submission to publication. These provide useful insights into the process and identify opportunities for improvement. These KPIs are updated with each issue of the Journal. Finally, a reminder to budding authors that the current ‘instructions to authors’ must be consulted and carefully applied to the submitted manuscript. This saves time (for everyone) and avoids the ‘desk rejection’ of manuscripts that ignore the instructions.

May Artificial Intelligence Be a Co-Author on an Academic Paper?

Dear Colleagues,
 Recently, for an article submitted to the European Journal of Therapeutics, it was reported that the paper may have been written with artificial intelligence support at a rate of more than 50% in the preliminary examination made with Turnitin. However, the authors did not mention this in the article’s material method or explanations section. Fortunately, the article’s out-of-date content and fundamental errors in its methodology allowed us no difficulty making the desk rejection decision.
 On the other hand, similar situations that we may encounter later caused us to discuss how we would decide when the artificial intelligence support of the articles was written. The general opinion that we have adopted and currently available in the literature is that if artificial intelligence is used while writing an article, how artificial intelligence is used in the methodology should be written in detail.
 Moreover, we encountered a much more exciting situation during our evaluation. In a few academic studies, we have seen that artificial intelligence is added as a co-author. On July 06, 2023, in the Web of Science, using the advanced search, we found four articles with the author name ChatGPT [1]. We have determined that ChatGPT is the author in one of these articles [2] and the Group Author in three [3-5].
 Lee [6] stated that although artificial intelligence tools are much more advanced than search engines, they cannot be an author regarding research ethics because they cannot take responsibility for what they write. Similarly, Goto and Katanoda [7] stated that it is the author’s responsibility to confirm that the texts written by ChatGPT are correct. However, Pourhoseingholi et al. [8] reported that keeping up with technology is inevitable. Additionally, they said that“this action will be more fruitful and practical in extended dimensions when international institutes like ICMJE or COPE come up with the appropriate adjustments and establish robust criteria to scheme the AI authorship”.
 Most probably, the use of artificial intelligence applications in scientific articles and whether it can be a co-author in these papers will be discussed soon.
 We encourage interested authors to submit their ideas to our journal as a letter to the editor.
 Yours sincerely,

От редактора: Процесс подачи рукописи в журнал «Образование и саморазвитие» через систему Editorial Park

Any scholarly journal undergoes changes at some point of its development. The updates can be large-scale and deal with the journal’s strategy, editorial policy or structure, or they can address technical issues. Whatever transformational processes are taking place, the journal’s activity is never void of them. In this editorial I want to focus on the E&SD transition onto a new platform and the submission process in this system. Education & Self Development has been using the Editorial Park system for about ten months. Over this course of time, the editors and reviewers have gained first-hand experience of working with the new platform. Similar to OJS, the Editorial Park enables editors to manage all processes from the moment when the journal receives a manuscript to the publication stage. The system’s interface is user-friendly. However, the software is not localized. Thus, authors cannot switch to the Russian language, if necessary. Though the submission process does not pose serious challenges, there are some specifics that I would like to highlight here. The submission process involves five steps or stages that require consistency. Initially, authors are supposed to fill out a checklist. One should realise that the formal completion of the checklist can result in a desk rejection. We strongly encourage authors to check our guidelines before submitting a paper.

Taking Account

Taking Account

ADDRESSING COMMON METHOD BIAS, OPERATIONALIZATION, SAMPLING, AND DATA COLLECTION ISSUES IN QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH: REVIEW AND RECOMMENDATIONS

When editing regular and special issues of numerous journals, we have observed several recurring shortcomings in the manuscripts, particularly in relation to methodology. Many of these manuscripts are often found lacking in providing critical methodological information or justifying the use of the selected methods, thus resulting in desk rejection at the preliminary stage or major revision in the review process. Although the theoretical and managerial aspects of manuscripts are essential to publication consideration, methodological flaws can be detrimental. It is therefore of no surprise that failures to address methodological concerns are some of the common reasons for a manuscript to be rejected from publication, even after going through several rounds of revision. The purpose of this editorial is to provide clear guidelines on effectively reporting the methodological section in a quantitative manuscript in the fields of business and social sciences. Specifically, we present a set of recommendations on implementing and reporting operationalization, instrument validation, sampling techniques, questionnaire administration, and common method bias. Researchers, whether students or academics, should consider these guidelines to ensure methodological rigor in their research projects.

Experience with "Select Crowd Review" in Peer Review for The Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeon: 1-Year Experience.

To evaluate the experience with a new peer review method, "Select Crowd Review" (SCR): anonymized PDFs of manuscripts are accessible to a reviewer crowd via an online platform. It has access for 10 days to enter anonymized comments directly into the manuscript. A SCR-Editor summarizes the annotations, giving a recommendation. Both reviewed PDF and summary are sent back to authors. Upon submission, authors are given a choice to accept or decline SCR. All manuscript submissions since introduction in July 2021 until July 2022 were analyzed regarding acceptance and quality. Manuscripts were sent to a crowd of 45 reviewers and regular double-blinded peer review at the same time. Efficiency and performance of the crowd's reviews were compared with those of regular review. For thoracic manuscripts, a crowd was not yet available. SCR was accepted by the authors for 73/179 manuscripts (40.8%). After desk rejections, 51 cardiac manuscripts entered SCR. For five manuscripts, the crowd did not respond. In all remaining papers, the crowd's recommendation concurred with that of the normal reviewers. Regular peer review took up to 6 weeks. Twelve manuscripts underwent repeated SCR after revision. A median of 2 (0-9) crowd members sent in reviews. In revisions, average response was one reviewer responding. SCR encountered good acceptance by authors. As the first experience showed concordant recommendations compared with traditional review, we have extended SCR to thoracic manuscripts for more experience. SCR may become the sole review method for eligible manuscripts. Efficiency should be increased, especially for re-review of revisions.