Academic editor offers tips on handling rejection of peer-reviewed journal articles

The difference between mediocre academics and the stellar ones are how they handle rejections from academic journals.

Here are a few general tips from an academic editor to follow:

1. You’re not special. Every academic has received a rejection. You may think your work is beyond reproach, most researchers do. You’ve spent a lot of time on it, and it hurts to see your efforts appear wasted.
2. Your efforts weren’t wasted. Listen to the positives it the reviews — they’re in there. You did a lot right and should be proud of your work.
3. Now, focus on the negatives. What are the structural problems with your work? How can you address them? Remember that excessive or snarky negativity is a sign of weakness from your reviewer — some reviewers have issues that have nothing to do with your ability.
4. Be transparent in your methodology. If problems were pointed out in how you approached your study, simply admit to those problems in the methodology. Explain why, despite the problems, your paper still adds valid information to the field.
5. Consider wholesale changes. Dropping or severely revising one area of your study is not out of the question. Why not narrow or eliminate the section that causes the most reviewer concern?
6. Count on new reviewers. Remember that different reviewers will view your next draft. They aren’t aware of your last draft. If you’ve revised well, they will see your work as far more cohesive, complete and well-written.
7. Don’t stop at two submissions. Many authors have published their manuscript on the third or fourth try. That’s why there are so many journals out there.
8. Get to work. Sometimes we think the work required on the revision will take far longer than it really does. A revision can often be completed over the weekend. Stop procrastinating.

Now brush yourself off and get to work revising your manuscript.

Academic proofreading

Academic proofreading services offered by Oxford Editing. 

When you send the manuscript through our website, we immediately assess the requirements you identified on the form and send out an inquiry via email to make sure that we did not miss any important information, such as the journal name and any requisite formatting or style. We then match your paper with the appropriate editor, who prepares a 500-word sample edit that will show you how your editor will edit the rest of your manuscript. This sample edit also helps us to identify the level of edit your paper requires and to calculate the cost of editing your document based on the level of editing. We ask that you send your entire document and not select out a small portion. This way, your editor can start editing from the beginning, and we can evaluate the whole document to see if it would benefit from a structural edit. We will treat your document with the greatest confidentiality.