Understanding upfront rejection
Why did the editor not consult a referee?
While a research paper typically undergoes peer-review, sometimes an editor may skip this part and decide that an external vet is unnecessary for early rejection. Why should this happen, and how the editors accomplish this task? There are several reasons for upfront rejection, as I will explain below, but wisely using the available resources — referees and editorial attention — are the main drive. The exact way that the editor will handle it will strongly depend on the journal. Let’s start exploring the easy cases:
Crackpot: Some topics are a source of great inspiration: not just scientific, but also literary. Every few weeks, someone tries to sabotage the legacy of Einstein or conspire against quantum mechanics. I hope you will grant me that we better spare the referees from working on those cases.
Scope: Among those who know, it is well-known that physicists are not physicians. Alas, sometimes the most unusual manuscripts are submitted, and desk rejection is crystal clear. Other cases are less trivial, and we may even consult a Board Member to discuss how far we stretch the boundaries. Whatever the case, what fits or not the scope of a journal is a purely editorial decision.
Cryptic: Sometimes, we receive indecipherable manuscripts. As a non-native speaker, I sympathize with the struggles of writing in a foreign language. Nevertheless, we expect the referees to concentrate and judge the scientific content of a paper. But this can become unnecessarily arduous if they deal with a grammatical odyssey. When I receive a paper that is hard to understand, I return it to the authors for improvements.
Get Katiuscia Cassemiro’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
The next level of analysis is less trivial. If a paper passed the previous tests, the editors then ask whether the results are significant enough — not for publication, but for being reviewed by a referee. Keep in mind that the bar is typically lower at this stage. If there are red flags and the likelihood of acceptance is considered too low, the editors will not consult a referee. To understand why this is reasonable, we must consider the use of the resources and constraints.
Referees: In the last decades, researchers have endured steep pressure for increasing the number of published articles. And they delivered. The number of submissions to the Physical Review family almost doubled in the last two decades. While the academic community is also larger than before, many Ph.D. graduates leave science to work on something else. From the ones that stay in academia, many do not necessarily become a new trustworthy referee. Such dynamics leads to a gloomy reality: the number of reviewers in the database grows at a rate considerably lower than the one of submissions. We have a strained review system, and several of our most trustworthy referees are overburden, typically reviewing multiple papers for many different journals. Editors must consider the referee pool as a precious and scarce asset, carefully deciding when to proceed with the consultation. It is our responsibility to obtain well-substantiated reports from knowledgeable and respected scientists, but this is only possible if we do not consult referees to judge papers away from the acceptable standards.
There is, of course, a subtle point in the above discourse. Consider a journal that is part of a family, like the Physical Review, where transferring from one journal to another within the family is a transparent and smooth process — all previous reports are available. In such a case, consulting a referee may sound legitimate, even if the publication is unlike at first instance, but possible considering the broader group of journals. The argument of not consulting a referee to spare it as a valuable resource would seem to crumble. What we are forgetting, however, is that it may take more time and more referees to judge whether a paper meets the acceptance criteria of a more selective journal. In practice, efficiently using referees will mean directing initial submissions to the journal where acceptance is more likely.
Editorial attention: At first inspection, it might appear benevolent towards authors when an editor consults referees regardless of the manuscript level. But what good does it do? Once I decide to send a manuscript to a referee, I commit to follow through with many and detailed steps to guarantee a high-quality review process. In other words, there is a considerable investment of editorial time and energy involved with this decision. While it is true that this is what constitutes my job, I must also know how to divide my attention among all submitted manuscripts. If the rejection is evident at submission, extending the decision to the end of the review will deliberately misuse editorial time — remember that this one is finite and can find use in activities that will benefit the journal as a whole. From your perspective as an author, you may consider the upfront rejection as skipping an unsuccessful and arduous review process, saving you a few months. Of course, some papers will go through peer-review and not be published, but as long one could not have anticipated the rejection, such fate is part of a healthy review process.
There are still two questions left to answer considering the editorial work.
— How the editor determines the threshold for upfront rejection? The main factor will be the knowledge of each editor — not on technical matters but general physics. The editors need to answer the following: what one learns with the paper, why it matters, and how it compares with previous results. For some papers, it might be easier to answer these questions than for others and, even though the editors frequently discuss with each other, the standards might slightly vary depending on the topic. Again, keep in mind that what we want to do is to filter out evident substandard papers. However, the editors may also consider whether the journal welcomes a new community and intentionally lower, slightly, the threshold for consulting referees and publishing within the target topics.
— How judicious are those decisions, especially when full-time editors may not be experts on the topic of the paper? I appreciate that this is a source of concern to some authors. I could offer my qualifications and time of editorial work to convince you of my clairvoyant capabilities, but perhaps an analogy works better. Asking editors whether we can judge upfront rejection is the same as asking the following to you: After a few months of getting used to your home and your belongings, if someone tells you to grab something in a specific place, can you do it with closed eyes? Of course, you can, even if it takes a few minutes. We only proceed with rejection without review if we are confident — as you would be moving through your house — otherwise, we do consult a referee. That is not to say that mistakes cannot happen. They can — as you may break a vase going around your home with closed eyes — but that should be rare. Still, on the occasion of a disagreement, there are communication channels available for solving them. Whether the editors are doing a good job is something continuously assessed. The Board Members of the journal provide frequent feedback and, ultimately, the quality of the published papers indicate whether the decisions are appropriate.
With all the arguments laid out here, it is worth ending with a note of caution. Some authors tend to submit their manuscripts to the most prestigious journals and proceed from there in a downward cascade of transfers until their manuscript finally reaches the journal where it is eventually published. While it can happen that authors sometimes misjudge the potential of their manuscript, a systematic occurrence of this cascade is not innocuous. Be mindful that, by following this strategy, you are ultimately straining the system and overburdening referees. Besides, when you write your manuscript having the journal’s readership in mind, you maximize the publication chances. As your manuscript journeys downward, a mismatch in writing style will become too evident, and you are likely to work again rewriting the paper. Next time you have a submission, please consider how you can better use your time, the one of referees and the one of editors. We are all part of the same community.
Acknowledgments: I discussed this topic multiple times, with many of my colleagues, over the years. I deeply appreciate their thought and expertise. For commenting on this particular posting, I thank Stojan Rebic (editor of Physical Review Letters).
Originally published on February 06, 2021 (Inactive personal blog)
