Reasons why articles are rejected or ignored by journals

[Myword]

 Has anyone seen a recent list of reasons why journal editors in different subjects turn down articles? It might depend on the field.  Would they be honest? The obvious reasons are poor writing style, wrong formats, too short or too long, or greatly inappropriate. (I have seen articles published that were very irrelevant to a journal.)
The article could merely be ignored, which is a silent rejection.

[mamselle]

How many ways do they not love us?

Let me count the ways...

Oops--Going to a conference session now, more later!

M.

[bio-nonymous]

One main reason (biomedical): not judged as "impactful" enough by the editor...and thus rejected outright without peer review.

[Parasaurolophus]

There's also the judgement that the article is not a good fit for the journal, or not of sufficient interest to its readership.

[Ruralguy]

Para's reasoning is what one journal I recently submitted to warns about on their own site, and one of my three reviewers said exactly this (not a good fit). So, I could see editors going in this direction on their own if its a particularly poor match.

As for them lying...why would they? They have the upper hand, so might as well speak their mind.  That isn't to say that some people won't round the corners somewhat when offering up explanations. 

[sandgrounder]

Social science editor here - my main reasons to desk reject are:
Completely out of the journal's remit - e.g. it's a chemistry paper.
Way too long or too short.
No or very little engagement with the existing literature while claiming to have original findings that are not.
A lot of glaring factual errors.
Plagiarism or major ethical issues.
No original theoretical or empirical findings.
No attempt at making a very obscure case study have wider relevance.
Conspiracy theories.

[jerseyjay]

I am history. I have had many desk rejections over the years, in both history and literary criticism (I publish in both). Almost all of my papers that have been desk rejected end up getting peer reviewed elsewhere, and eventually published somewhere.

The biggest reason is some variation of the article does not fit into the journal. This could mean everything and anything. Sometimes an editor includes a more or less detailed response, sometimes the editor suggests that it might be better fitted for another journal, sometimes the editor says he or she is sure it will be published somewhere. Usually it comes down to the article is too specialized and not of sufficient interest to a general audience in the field.

Is this an honest response? Well since the editor is saying it doesn't fit, it doesn't fit. I do try to read the journal before submitting, so I rarely submit something to an entirely wrong journal. The question of fit is rather subjective, and sometimes I believe that the article would fit perfectly. But that is the job of the editor, and also I do not have an overview of what is coming in the pipeline.

My biggest peeve is not that I think that the editor is lying, but that they sometimes say almost nothing except it isn't a fit, and they take a long time doing so. The longer the wait, the more feedback I want. On the other hand, if a journal rejects it within a week, I am okay if there is no feedback. I had an article desk rejected after a year with no comments, and that was annoying; I had another desk rejected after two weeks with abundant feedback, and that was almost nice. At least in that case I knew the editor had actually read the article.

I have never had a "silent rejection". Each of my pieces that was rejected was explicitly rejected. Sometimes after way too long, and sometimes in a way a disagree with. But I have never had an article just disappear. I usually start emailing the editor if I don't hear anything back after a few days, since most journals will at least acknowledge receipt. I had a rejection take three years, but that was after one managing editor died, another quit, and one of the peer reviewers managed to loose the draft. But it was not a silent rejection.

[Wahoo Redux]

Most academic editors and readers are working unpaid on the side, either out of a love of the discipline or love of a tenure review. These folks have to make time and that sometimes slows things waaaaaaaay down.  I have had two editors apologize this year because COVID interfered with their editorial process.

Some, I think, work for the arrogance.  There is no way to predict why or what you will get as you sit on the writer's side of the screen.

I have gotten everything from gracious but preformatted rejection emails; to two single-spaced pages of comments that completely rewrote my papers; to kindly (and much appreciated) thoughtful reviews that gave me whole new insights; to two sentence "needs to engage the literature more" after-thoughts; to one outright firing-squad burbling hate-bomb from a reader who I was pretty sure did not read my article.

I find it very hard to predict what will happen.  Two of my rejects bounced from lower prestige journals and were taken with minimal changes by high prestige journals.  I never have figured out exactly why.

Resubmit.  Good luck.

[Sun_Worshiper]

In my experience as an author in the social sciences, desk rejections have been attributed to fit, likely impact, or the editor's sense that the manuscript isn't good enough to get through peer review. As an editorial board member, the editor has asked me to chime in on whether an article's contribution is novel enough to bother with peer review.

[Myword]

I read very very few articles in my field that are "novel" at all and lack originality. So many are padded with unne essary redundant material, as if they were paid by the word. Occasionally a psychology article is too brief with no analysis or depth.

[Wahoo Redux]

I read very very few articles in my field that are "novel" at all and lack originality. So many are padded with unne essary redundant material, as if they were paid by the word. Occasionally a psychology article is too brief with no analysis or depth.

Right now I am padding an article because that is exactly what the editor told me to do.  I expressed my ideas but they were not "theorized" enough.

[jerseyjay]

I read very very few articles in my field that are "novel" at all and lack originality. So many are padded with unne essary redundant material, as if they were paid by the word. Occasionally a psychology article is too brief with no analysis or depth.

Right now I am padding an article because that is exactly what the editor told me to do.  I expressed my ideas but they were not "theorized" enough.

Yes. One of the most common comments I get is that an article needs to "deal with the literature" or "situate itself in the historiography" or some such. Sometimes it is more specific, as in, "This article should deal with X writer...." I don't disagree with the importance of explaining how a piece fits into what has already been written, but as a practical matter this often adds several paragraphs to an article. Rather than make the article sharper, it often makes it duller. (There are of course exceptions, such as when an article directly takes head-on an accepted argument, but often I find myself saying things like my article "adds nuance" or "fleshes out" accepted historiography.)

As a reader, I often skip these parts of the article. When I work on converting an article into a book, these are often the first things that I cut.

As a historian, I try to make my work unique by either looking at a subject that has not been examined in depth, using sources that have not been used before, or looking at a subject from a perspective that has not been examined before. But so long as people are required to regularly publish to get a job, keep their job, or get promoted, some people will publish things without really having anything new to say.

[mamselle]

Lit-crit analysis (along the lines of "theorized," above) expected even when the work is a constructive piece, putting together a crazy quilt of sources that have been sent off all over the globe (well, all over France, Ireland, England, Italy, Belgium and the US at last count).

Deconstruction doesn't enter into it: I'm trying to put the thing together, someone else can pull it apart after that's done.

I've seen two like that come bouncing back to me; I can fold in a bit of commentary to please them but it feels wrong.

Lit-crit has become its own advocate and raison d'etre--to the extent that everything now has to be seen through ITS lens, which isn't always useful or appropriate.

Heresy, I know.

M.

[Wahoo Redux]

Well, to be fair, things should be put into "conversation" with other relevant ideas.  The article I am currently sewing and resewing (which did not get done today and MUST be done by tomorrow) has my original ideas-----but I can also see the 'So what?' question nipping about its head if it doesn't deal with the special focus of this issue.

And sometimes researching and redirecting really helps an article, at least in my experience, not to mention and looking for the "theorization" is a great way to learn new things.

I guess it just depends on how much fun you are having stuffing in the padding...and right now my textual pillow is big and squishy and it needs to go to bed.

[mamselle]

In one or two areas I work in, "Lit-crit" approaches have completely distorted factual reporting of art/dance/theatre activities, and have created an arena for confused, speculative "vamping" on a thematic idea. This competes with accurate discussion of an element in the work that needs to be traced chronologically and through artist/studio recensension and reconstruction techniques, not free-form "spinning" of an analytical metaphor.

For example: There is a string of writers who've been doing this since the 1940s, at least, to the point that the actual sources, transmission, and appearance of, say, "circle dances" is hopelessly tangled because these smart-aleck fly-by rhetoricians like to play with "the concept of circularity" in texts where they then try to impute vectors of transmission of dances using a circular floor pattern, based on poetic comments, and not dance ethnographic or dance historical observations.

It's just about wrecked the trail of evidence, since one has to pick through the dross.

AND, they sound more "exciting," AND SO they get published faster and more often, leaving those of us trying to do more resposible work in the dust.

Just sat through a session yesterday, where it happened AGAIN.

Yes, I am just a bit tired of it.

And so, sorry, but, no, "theorizing" is not a simple multi-vitamin to be added to one's written regime that carries no bad side effects when it's not needed or not appropriate.

M.