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This is a #ritaunsolicited ridiculously long thread (actually 1/2 threads) on…appeals! I plan to cover many topics in the coming weeks, but I think appeals are particularly ripe for conversation. My goal is to help authors. If rejections/appeals are triggering, maybe stop here.
I’m a bit nervous about posting this thread, because rejections and appeals are a sore point for many people. I hope people appreciate that this is a good faith effort on my part to talk openly about a sensitive topic from the perspective of an editor.
As always, I want to say that there is no one-size-fits-all advice, and this might not be for you. Other editors may disagree, and different journals have specific policies. I am offering my point of view from my experience as an author and an editor at Nature Methods.
I want to talk a bit about rejections, because appeals out of this context make no sense. At Nature Methods, we reject the vast majority of our initial submissions. We reject for a variety of reasons (not the focus of this thread). The point here is simply that you’re not alone.
Rejections and appeals are heated topics! Rejection hurts. It causes legitimate physical and emotional pain. Please remember that editors were bench scientists and authors once. We’ve very likely had our papers rejected. We remember.
The fact that we have been there and remember makes us BETTER at our jobs. Part of our job is disappointing people. Not nameless faces, but real people. At least for myself, I can say this knowledge keeps me careful. I am not dismissive of papers or indifferent about rejection.
When we reject a paper, we are not saying that the paper should not be published anywhere—far from it! I want people, especially junior scientists, to keep that in mind when they hear back from journals. I reject solid, interesting papers every day, and they do find a good home.
So, now on to my purpose: appeals. Frankly, most editors I know don’t love appeals. They are more work for us, and they are more often than not unsuccessful, which means that we have to reject the same people twice. Not fun for us!
That being said, I think appeals are a valuable part of the publication process, at least as it is right now. Why? Because no one’s perfect! Papers are a lot of work and where you publish them can matter! At the very least, I am in favor of more conversation than less.
Now onto details. There are two main types of appeals: appeals after desk rejection and appeals following review. I will talk about these in order.
Appeals after desk rejection are the least successful. They are not a lost cause, but we are good at our jobs, and if we didn’t want to send a paper out, we have (to our view) valid reasons.
Painfully honest bit here: if you got fairly generic rejection text, the likelihood of an appeal-yes is very low. It was not a good fit.
In that case, there is still action you can take, which is to simply ask the editor for more details to understand how you could improve your paper for submission elsewhere. This is another sometimes awkward, but important bit of an editor’s job.
Moving on, I think when papers get rejected, it’s very natural for authors to feel that the editors failed to understand or appreciate the work. Think this all you want, but this is not a mindset for a productive appeal of a desk rejection.
Assume the editor read and understood your work. Assume we did our part of the job correctly. If you have no trust in the capabilities of the editorial board to do so, ask yourself if it’s a journal you really care to publish in.
Try reframing the issue. Think: my paper got rejected. Given that this is a really exciting and important story, that means I failed convey my work properly. What can I tell them that they might not have appreciated that could change their minds?
That brings me to the key for appealing a desk rejection: new information. We read your cover letter, paper, and supplement already. Tell us something new! Without new information, we cannot make a different decision.
Also, if we give you specific information in a rejection and you can add new data to address this point, talk to us! That is the perfect place to begin an appeal of a desk rejection.
Moving on to appeals after rejection. Sometimes we reject after review with what we call ‘an open door’. In this case, we think there were too many problems to justify a straightforward revise decision, and you could probably publish more quickly with a fresh review elsewhere.
But if you want to do a MAJOR revision and come back to us, we would be open to seeing the paper again. Appeals of these rejections are the most successful and the most straightforward. You typically have to be willing to add a lot of data.
Appeals of ‘closed door’ rejections are less successful, but are sometimes worth doing. Here, again, brutal honesty is important.
If you received three negative reviews with criticisms about novelty, level of advance, narrow applicability, and that raise major technical flaws, be realistic about what you might have to do to change our minds and whether it isn’t just better to start fresh somewhere else.
However, if the reviews are mixed or raise what we may have perceived to be a killer flaw that is actually a misunderstanding, then it may make sense to appeal. We are not perfect, nor do we expect our reviewers to be. These are cases that are ripe for conversation.
In these cases, write us a full point-by-point rebuttal. For us, new data are welcome but not expected for an appeal. This is the best way for us to begin a conversation with you.
Apparently this is the last tweet I'm allowed on this thread, so if you care to, please read on in the next thread!
