Friday, June 27, 2014

Fight for your right (to publish?)

When you get a rejection, do you call the editor / program officer / etc. and "give them the business"?

I am curious. I never heard of doing this until a natural scientist friend told me this was common practice in her field for journals. ("That's what the boys do," she whispered conspiratorially). 

Having been raised to be quiet and well-behaved (*ahem*), when I receive a rejection I usually take it to mean I need to buckle down and write a better paper / proposal. I assumed that was what everyone did. But apparently some people make phone calls.

10 comments:

  1. I know people who swear by this technique and have been successful with it. But they only do it when they feel they have a really good case. I admit I am also more inclined to "flight" than to "fight."

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  2. I am also recently initiated into this group - we had a somewhat "soft" rejection of a paper I felt strongly was of sufficient quality to be published in this particular journal. In discussions with male colleagues, I discovered that this is their standard operating procedure. Apparently this is how papers get published in the glamor mags, they rarely accept something on the first submission. I agree that it seems ridiculous to fight everything. But I get the impression that we (by we I mean most women) should fight much more than we.

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  4. yes, I've heard this too. My post-doc advisor did this for one of his pubs. The rejection was based on "this doesn't really fit in our journal" but once the conversation was done it did fit..... not sure if I would be comfortable doing it but it's more open conversation on the phone since there is not the "paper trail" so therefore the suggestions might be more overt.

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  5. I've seen it done, but very rarely. My advice: use it only as a last resort if you really think you have a case.
    I don't think this has to do with gender, but I may be wrong (no data).

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  6. I think that pestering editors pays off only when you feel strongly that your publication merits publication. But its important to have a realistic idea about the quality of your work. Lots of investigators don't get good feedback prior to submission and they suffer from what I call "American Idol" syndrome. The believe their work to be far superior than it actually is and become highly offended when they get speedy rejections. I work with a guy who submits *every* paper he writes to Nature and of course he gets a quick rejection. He then moves down the ladder in terms of impact factor, again with frequent rejections, and usually finds himself in the same 2 or 3 journals - none of which are particularly impactful. Not only is he wasting his time but he is wasting the time of every editor at those journals he knows who aren't going to publish his paper. Unfortunately there are many out there just lik him.

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  7. Social/behavioral scientist weighing in... I do not do this but apparently some folks who have some weight to throw around do. I and a co-author DID once send a polite-but-firmly-annoyed response after resubmitting an R&R, having done EVERYTHING the reviewers said in the revision, and getting back comments on the revision that were essentially "mmm, I just don't like it". The point was less to lobby for the paper's acceptance and more to convey to the editor in as gentle terms as possible that we (and others) would be unlikely to bother with a journal that wastes authors' time with an unreasonable R&R process.

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  8. As one of the editors at a 'glamour mag', I can tell you that it does happen that people call, but it only succeeds when we've really made a mistake/misunderstood something; just calling to say 'I disagree, you should change your mind' is not compelling.

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  9. I have not tried to fight for the publishing by calling editors. However, one time I felt the reviewers' comments were very biased (I knew clearly there was no consensus in that reviewers' expertise, I revised the manuscript according to the reviewers' comment and wrote a cover letter to editor to point out the "consensus" issue. The manuscript finally was published.

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