Types of Rejections of the Article

1. Rejection Based on the Editor’s Opinion Before Review:

This is usually because your article is not within the scope of the journal, or there is a great literature review in that area. Top journals may reject your article because of its poor writing, grammatical errors or lack of innovation. If this is the case, correct the article and send it to another journal.

2. Rejection Based on the Reviewer’s Opinion:

This happens the editor rejects the article by evaluating the reviewers’ comments and may indicate in the email not to submit the article again. In this case, it is better to apply the reviewers’ comments (if correct) should be submitted to another journal. Moreover, you can also submit the article to the same journal although it is not recommended.

How to Revise a Rejected Article?

Every rejected article has the chance of being resubmitted to another journal if the necessary revisions are made.

More than 60% of articles submitted to journals are either rejected or request revisions. If you also experience this, do not worry and think that your article is worthless and you can’t publish it. Many researchers have been able to publish their rejected articles in other journals after revising them and making the necessary changes.

But what should you do when you receive an e-mail (like the following) from the editor?

“Your manuscript has been reviewed, and it is being returned to you with the attached comments and suggestions. We believe these comments will help you improve your manuscript.”

Focus carefully on the reviewers’ comments. If two or more reviewers have commented on one section of the article, know that the section must be substantially flawed so fix it.

Generally, article revisions are either minor or major revisions. Minor revisions are easy to do. You can go through them easily; you just need to be careful. But fixing major problems is a bit harder. This occurs when your article has one of the following conditions:

1. The reviewers’ comments are correct and you accept them. In this case, you should follow the reviewer’ instructions and apply their comments.

 

2. If some of the reviewers’ comments are invalid, consider the following in reviewing the article and applying the reviewers’ comments:

     Apply those that seem logical to you. Regarding the ones you think are incorrect, clarify what you believe the reviewers are doing wrong and write a logical explanation to them in a letter.

    After making the changes and before submitting the article to the journal, in a letter you prepared for the editor and the reviewers, show exactly how and where the changes were made in the article.

3. Sometimes the reviewers and even the editors misinterpret the article due to a lack of understanding of the article. If you are confident that the reviewers’ opinion is incorrect, do one of the followings:

    You can withdraw the article from the reviewing process of that journal and submit it to another journal.

    But if you want to resubmit it to the same journal, you have to try your best. You must reject the reviewers’ comments in a logical, rational and, of course, polite manner.

 

If you want to re-submit the article to the same journal, consider the deadline. Failure to comply with the deadline for submission of the article means that you have canceled and your article will be removed from the reviewing process. If you submit your paper to the journal after the deadline, it is possible that the reviewers have changed and your paper will have to go through the review process all over again.

 

Here are some tips to consider about the reviewing of an article:

Read the reviewers’ comments carefully and prepare detailed letters of your answers.

• Answer all the comments and questions.
• Number the pages and lines of the article’s text so you can accurately refer to where the changes have been made.
• Use the font of the modified sentences to determine exactly where you changed the article.
• The tone of responses to an editor’s email should not be offensive or hostile.
• Follow the deadline set by the editor to resubmit the revised article.