Publication Support Services
Research Publication Solutions to Help You Publish Your Manuscript in International English Journals
Publishing years of research as a paper in International Journals has always been a must-do for researchers across the globe. It is a widely known fact that academic publishing is a rigorous process. For many researchers, especially first timers, the publishing process can be a daunting task. Non-adherence to journal guidelines and publishing protocols result in outright rejections. Hence, the crude reality of academic publishing is that there are more manuscript rejections than acceptances, let alone successful publications.
Top Most Reasons for Manuscript Rejection
- The manuscript is outside the scope of the journal
- The manuscript is incomplete; it lacks rudiments such as the title, authors, affiliations, keywords, main text, references and all tables and figures
- Language and grammar are not up to the mark for the peer review process
- The figures are not complete or are not clear enough to read
- References are incomplete or very old
- Plagiarism has been detected in the manuscript
Publishing journey of a manuscript
Let’s have a quick look at the publishing journey of a manuscript and learn how Paper Publication Support services can help you at each stage.
Writing is Complete
You have completed writing a rigorous manuscript. Data, writing, graphs, citations, illustrations, etc., have been finalized. Now you think your manuscript is ready for submission and start finding the appropriate journal.
Selecting a Journal
While selecting a journal, there are a few things that you must check to ensure journal suitability and minimize the chances of outright rejection. Some of these are as follows:
- Scope of study
- Target journal type (scope, focus, etc.)
- Urgency to publish
- Accessibility features (open access, print only, etc.)
- Type of article
- Significance of article in its field of specialty
Years of experience as a published author can help you evaluate these parameters with ease. At Enago Publication Support, you can get access to Journal Selection experts in your area of research. Simply send us your criteria, and we will present you with the 3 to 5 journals best suited to your manuscript and preferences through our Journal Selection service.
Submission
Next step after selecting an appropriate journal is following the submission protocols of the journal. This is another tedious task for authors who are already exhausted after completing their manuscript. It’s a more complicated process for authors for whom English is their second language and are intending to submit their paper to an international journal.
Our journal submission experts are skilled in submitting papers to various international journals. When your manuscript is ready for submission, our publishing experts will complete this tedious process on your behalf.
A submission expert checks your manuscript against the journal guidelines and gives you a list of must-dos and fixes to meet the journal guidelines. When you’re ready, they complete the submission on your behalf.
Screening
This is the most important stage in the lifecycle of a manuscript. It is here where the editor decides whether the manuscript is competent enough to go through the further process. If not, the manuscript will go back to the author with a rejection letter, suggestions for major/minor changes, or advise to submit to an alternative journal.
21%
rejection after editorial screening (without review)
At this crucial stage, rejections occur primarily due to the below reasons:
- Scope of Work
- Formatting and Proofreading
Plagiarism
1. Scope of Work
Problems faced!
When a manuscript is outside the purview of the submitted journal, the editor has no choice but to out-rightly reject it.
How we help?
Thoroughly research about the journal that you’re submitting and ensure that its scope matches your scope of work. You can also use our Journal selection service to help you match your manuscript with the top 3-5 journals, while you sit back and relax.
2. Formatting & Proofreading Errors
Problems faced!
An excerpt from an article by Elsevier states, typos, grammatical errors, and formatting are one of the prime reasons for rejections.
How we help?
Elsevier suggests having a native-English speaker proofread the paper, and even if you are a native-English speaker, do it for a third-person perspective. That is where our Formatting and Artwork Editing Services can help. Under this, Enago experts will iron out all the minor defects, format your paper, and beautify your images and tables to help you submit a flawless manuscript, thus improving your chances of acceptance.
Source: Elsevier
3. Plagiarism
Problems faced!
According to Peter Thrower, an editor with Elsevier, one of the reasons for rejections is that the article contains elements that are suspected to be plagiarized. Republishing articles or parts of articles using text or images without permission invariably results in outright rejections.
Source: Elsevier
How we help?
Using advanced plagiarism softwares like iThenticate, we scan and check the originality of your manuscript and then provide you with a report which highlights any text that can be considered as plagiarized by the journals.
Peer Review
50%
rejection after peer review
According to an article on Elsevier, more than 50% rejections occur after the peer review process. This process can take anywhere from 30 to 120 days. This crucial time is wasted when a manuscript is not competent for further procedure and hence rejected. A manuscript is rejected at this stage due to various reasons, such as lack of originality, serious conceptual and/or methodological flaws, or poor grammar or English language issues.
Source: Publishing Research Consortium
How we help?
The above reasons for rejection at the Peer Review stage are considerably avoidable with Enago’s Pre-submission Peer Review service. With us, you don’t have to wait months for feedback on your work; we offer professional peer review by subject-matter experts within 7 days. Experts in your field of study will review your paper section by section to pinpoint areas for improvement and provide suggestions to make your Journal peer review process easy and fruitful. We also offer Substantive Editing service for manuscripts that require a thorough review of overall logic and flow of work. Our experts go beyond ensuring the proper use of the English language, and focus on structure and strength of your research while providing invaluable feedback on content enhancement. Over 90% of researchers believe that peer review improved the quality of their last published paper by identifying scientific errors and missing and inaccurate references.
Based on the Peer-reviewer’s feedback, the journal accepts or rejects the manuscript. If rejected with minor/major revisions, the author is expected to address the reviewer’s comments and feedback and resubmit the manuscript.
Journal Decision
Phil Corlett, a postdoc at the Brain Mapping Unit at Cambridge suggests, “Scientists have manuscripts rejected at all stages of their careers. So it’s best to get used to it and learn to deal with it effectively, to give your manuscript another chance. Look at submission, revision, and resubmission as an iterative process.”
Source: Sciencemag
Editors and reviewers reject a manuscript stating various reasons; this is specified in the rejection letter. Often, manuscripts can be submitted back to the same journal with major or minor revisions. For major criticisms, you’ll want to consider them carefully and use them to strengthen your manuscript and make sure you have convincingly dealt with all of the criticisms. If you plan to submit to a different journal, incorporating the suggestions will make your research stronger and improve chances of acceptance. Your revisions may require substantial changes to the methodology, additional experiments, or analysis of data all over again, all within the journal deadline.
How we help?Our journal experts can incorporate all the suggestions by your reviewer and ensure that your manuscript is thoroughly rewritten to meet the expectations of the journal reviewers, and then send the revised manuscript to you in as less as 5 days—all of this, even if you have used the editing services of another company for earlier drafts. Upon completion of revision, your manuscript will be absolutely ready to be resubmitted.