Rejected for publication: What now?

So, your manuscript was rejected? Before you start firebombing the editor’s place of work and writing screeds on your blog, consider the following. Put yourself in the reviewer’s shoes. It may be hard to do so, but it is often the best way to understand what the reviewer is trying to communicate. If the reviewer … read more

A letter from the frustrated author of a journal paper

Paul Roebber sent me this hilarious letter written by a frustrated author to the Editor. Enjoy! Glass, R. L., 2000: A letter from the frustrated author of a journal paper. The Journal of Systems and Software, 54, 1. [PDF] Image from http://lightsallaround.wordpress.com/author/jackieleasommers/

The decreasing number of studies with negative results

When I lived in Oklahoma, Chuck Doswell used to lament to me that it was difficult to publish null cases in meteorology (for example, when something was forecast to happen, but didn’t). Later, when talking to Roseanne McNamee at the University of Manchester, she lamented the same. There are even several journals for negative results: … read more

Scientists Behaving Badly

Fabrication of data, plagiarism, theft, retraction, image duplication, destruction of property, and death. These are the results from the Top Science Scandals of 2011, as determined by The Scientist magazine. (Thanks to Dave Topping for pointing this out.)

The Top Journals in Science (for retractions)

Roger Pielke Jr. reports on a Wall Street Journal article on the number of retractions published in scientific journals. The top three journals in the number of retractions (1900 to 2010)? 1. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (57 retractions) 2. Science (54 retractions) 3. Nature (43 retractions) Graphic here by N. Saunders. Think … read more

Please don’t write multiple-part papers!

I’ve talked about this topic of writing multiple-part papers before. Earlier this year, I published an article about what the data show from Monthly Weather Review. Schultz, D. M., 2011: Rejection rates for multiple-part manuscripts. Scientometrics, 86, 251-259. [PDF] I found that although the rejection rates for multiple-part manuscripts were not that different from the … read more

For better outcomes in the review process, send your editor some food and drink

If the results from a recently published article on the factors affecting judges making parole decisions are analogous to that of a journal editor making accept/revise/reject decisions on manuscripts, then send your editor some food and encourage them to take a break. Danziger, S., J. Levav, and L. Avnaim-Pesso, 2011: Extraneous factors in judicial decisions. … read more

Quick Guide to Writing a Solid Peer Review

Nicholas and Gordon, writing in EOS, offer up one of the best summaries of how to write a peer review I’ve read. Download that article from here.

“This issue was not raised by the other reviewers, so we prefer not to address it.”

As a reviewer and an editor, I occasionally see an author respond to a reviewer comment with the above response: “This issue was not raised by the other reviewers, so we prefer not to address it.” This response has always bothered me, but I didn’t know why. After thinking about it recently, now I know … read more

Offensive and Defensive Writing: The Secret to Getting Your Manuscript Published?

In a recent email conversation with my friend John Knox, he mentioned a game that he played by trying to spot the parts of the text in a scientific article that the author added specifically to address reviewers’ concerns. I have to admit to playing the same game at times. John’s point was that the … read more

Next Page »