Clarity of decision: give your authors more context about why you made a manuscript decision

How to help authors – and save time – by using clear decision terms and phrases

As you know, more often than not, manuscripts do not make it all the way to publication. Feedback from authors in such cases show that they are looking for a few key things:

• a quick response from the editor (ideally within a week)

• an explanation of why the paper was rejected (which demonstrates the paper was properly evaluated)

• some words of encouragement

• A transfer recommendation to a suitable alternative journal, or some advice on what to do next

Helping authors advance – whether it be in this journal or not – is a central element of the academic publishing experience. It is a key step in cultivating an active community of researchers willing to come back to the journal, again and again. Authors who receive clear direction are much more willing to improve their work based on editors’, and reviewers’, comments. Clarity as to why a paper was rejected is crucial for authors, with many of them (almost half of all authors of rejected manuscripts) telling us that they are not getting the level of detail they need and deserve.

Happily, there are functionalities in Editorial Manager which you can employ to help authors understand why they’ve been rejected and enable them to move ahead with their work.

Start with a suitable rejection term

Aside from decision terms which are specific to the journal, most Elsevier journals have a series of terms which offer a basic explanation for the most common rejection motivations (e.g., unable to secure reviewers, poor language, etc...). These decision terms should be used where appropriate. For example, an astrophysics paper submitted to a neuroscience journal should receive an “out of scope” decision. However, a paper which does not meet the novelty or quality bar of the journal should be rejected with the “insufficient impact” or “below publication standards” term.

Do not forget there is a new decision term titled “Reject – Potential Ethics Concerns” which is now available for all our journals. This is a general term covering (suspected) ethical misconduct, such as unjustified authorship changes, simultaneous submissions, image manipulation, plagiarism, and/or citation manipulation. By incorporating this decision term, you will also be helping us to identify and track large scale ethical misconduct across multiple journals as well as ensure that potentially problematic papers are not offered the opportunity for article transfer to another journal. Talk with your publishing contact if you want to learn more…

Add detail by giving even more feedback through decision phrases

As well as selecting the most appropriate term, you can also make use of “editor decision phrases”. These are predefined text snippets providing even more context on typical editorial decisions. You can select one or multiple of these phrases and they will then automatically appear in the author decision letter below the signature under “Editor and Reviewer Comments”.

Summary

Letting authors know the reason their paper was rejected is not only a basic courtesy; doing so also gives authors invaluable pointers both to improve their present paper for publication elsewhere, as well as inform their future research and writing efforts.

Hopefully, this might lead them towards a future submission to your own journal that is more successful. Decision terms and phrases can provide such feedback to authors in a way that saves you time. This also helps authors transfer to a more suitable journal and improve their manuscript.

Further reading:

• Why on earth did you reject my paper?!

• Tips & trick for managing the peer review process

• Manuscript rejected? Five insider tips to see you to success

• The surprising benefits of rejection