Very few articles are accepted upon first submission. In fact, some journals have rejections rates as high as 97%.1 If your article is rejected by one journal, it does not mean the paper won’t be published—you just need to find the right fit.
Editors may turn down your article for a number of reasons. Robert O. Williams III, AAPS PharmSciTech editor-in-chief, cites the following most-common reasons why papers are rejected from AAPS PharmSciTech:
- Poorly written and cited Introduction and Discussion sections
- High similarity to published content
- Incremental instead of novel confirmatory data
- Poor quality or unconvincing data
- Not a good fit for journal scope and audience
- Poorly written
The AAPS Journal Editor-in-Chief Ho-Leung Fung shares, “Don’t get discouraged if your paper is rejected…. It’s okay to be emotional… but you can only do it for a day or two. Then, start to improve the manuscript objectively. Identify weaknesses, consider new experiments, and new conclusions.”2
Springer Nature can help make the re-submission process after rejection easier and smoother. The Transfer Desk is a relatively new Springer Nature journal feature built to help authors transfer their submission easily from one journal to another within the Springer Nature family. This tool helps promote the timely publication of new research by recommending similar journals and aiding in the submission process.
When an AAPS editor-in-chief turns down your article, they can then choose to send the article to the Springer Nature Transfer Desk. The Transfer Desk team evaluates your article and recommends other journals to which you can submit. If you accept any of the Transfer Desk’s recommendations, they will help you with the transfer. Journal editors can recommend specific transfers as well. Rest assured that your article will never be transferred without your explicit approval.
This feature can be used to transfer articles between AAPS journals or within the Springer Nature family. AAPS hopes that you will submit your research to one of our highly esteemed journals, which boast strong success metrics like Impact Factors and turnaround times along with effective reviewers and rapid customer service. If our journals aren’t the right fit, then we hope you will transfer your article to another Springer Nature journal to ultimately help advance research to drive therapies and cures.
The Transfer Desk team may also recommend that an article you submitted to another journal be instead submitted to an AAPS journal. If you aren’t sure about transferring to an AAPS journal, learn more about each journal on our website or reach out to our editorial team with any questions.
References
- Mukherjee D. 11 Reasons Why Research Papers Are Rejected. Medium. Published March 7, 2018. Accessed March 30, 2020.
- Ten Useful Tips for Writing a Successful Manuscript: For Beginners. AAPSPharmceutica. Published September 24, 2014. Accessed March 30, 2020.
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Adapted from https://www.springernature.com/gp/authors/transferdesk