8. Top tips: submitting and reviewing a manuscript

Listen to Dr. Kathryn Hinsliff-Smith

My name is Dr Kathryn Hinsliff-Smith and I am an Associate Professor at a University in the UK, De Montfort. Today I wanted to share with you some tips form the point of view of an editor. I am an editor for an international journal based on nurse education as well as conducting reviews for a number of other journals I want to share with you some top tips and the process in terms of submitting your manuscript as we refer to it.

So first of all, I am going to share with you at the end some top tips and hopefully these will help to guide you through the process and success of submitting your manucsript.

I am going to now share with you the process and the process I am going to describe to you is the same as most journals that are international, national or local. So first of all, lets have a look at the process itself.

When you submit most journals are now online submissions, and will often be handled by an administrator. I want you to think about the number of manuscripts that get submitted, so for example my own journal for example in the last 2 – 3 years we have had in excess of 1,000 submissions each year. That’s just one journal, that’s based on nurse education, if you think about your own area you may be aware of some key journals you can often see the number of submissions and rejection rates, number of subscriptions and number of editions. So again, most journals now publish online s there is a requirement for such a throughput of submissions.

So first of all, what the process is doing, the journal administration tea will be checking that you meet all the requirements, for example have you uploaded a covering letter, have you made all the required declaration in terms of funding and authorship for the publication plus any other items required for that journal.

Once this is completed, this may take a few hours or a day or so, your manuscript will then be assigned to an editor for the journal and that editor is checking that the submission meets the aims and objectives of the journal, and its no surprise to hear that most journals get oversubscribed with submissions. This stage is when desk rejection can occur. The average & is around 80% get desk rejected. Often the reasons for this s that the manuscript does not meet the aims and objectives of the journal, it doesn’t appear to add anything new to the evidence base, it may be old data that’s included in your submission, or it may be a feeling that there is already a lot of evidence published in this area or on this topic and your submission doesn’t appear to offer anything further to the evidence base. So, you will receive a desk rejection and at this stage you are very unlikely to get any feedback other than some standard lines that they are unable to proceed with your submission.

Hopefully through listening to the resource you can now see why this might occur.

So, lets assume that with your submission the editors have looked at your submission and agreed that it is appropriate for the journal they will then proceed to send to a handling editor or a member of the journal’s editorial board, they will also review the submission. They may have queries on your submission so will correspond with you or they may decide upon a further review/read that they will decide to reject at this stage without peer review, and this can happen.

Let’s be positive and assume that your submission meets all the journal aims and objectives and it is going to go for peer review.

Listen to Dr. Kathryn Hinsliff-Smith

The peer review process for most journals is a minimum of two reviewers, most are voluntary, unpaid but it supports scholarly academic activity. Reviewers agree to review particularly if it is in their research or interest area, for example my own in nurse education. So, the handling editor will be seeking out reviewers and, in most cases, this is now done online. The important thing here is your keywords as these are used to marry up to reviewer keywords for which reviewers have agreed and have registered to be a reviewer. So as editors we are trying to marry these two aspects together to gain a review. We ask reviewers to review and provide a period of time, this is usually around 20 – 28 days in which to complete. On the positive, we hope that we can secure reviewers on the first occasion of asking. The two completed reviews will go back the handling editor who will decide based on the reviewer comments, and this might be one of two things: a rejection and they will provide feedback to you or an accept with revisions required. It may be an accept with no revisions, this is the gold standard and in the number of years that I have submitted and write, manuscripts it is very rare to have an acceptance straight off without a reviewer giving feedback or requesting some revisions, even minor.

The revision request and feedback are sent back to the corresponding author and it is then up to you to address those comments/issues either with a rebuttal or you agree that a suggestion might improve and strengthen your submission so it is up to yourselves to address in a timely way, revise and then send back to the journal for approval by either returning to the same reviewers or the editors may review and approve. Hopefully you get an acceptance but sometimes, its very rare but you might even at this stage receive a rejection due to the revisions conducted which has highlighted some further queries. We will assume the positive and the handling editor will make the final decision and advise you.

Hopefully success and your manuscript has been accepted. You will move into a journal production team who will liaise with you, usually online about your submission. Usually and very speedily you will usually see can online pre-proof version online.

So well done, success, that’s great.

Listen to Dr. Kathryn Hinsliff-Smith

So, what can go wrong?

Well there are a number of things. In terms of rejection, obviously there are things you can do to improve this by referring to the author guidance and your submission meets all the requirements of the chosen journal. Is it the right journal in your interest/research area ? Have you conducted research about the journal, have they published your type of work? For example, some journals won’t publish scoping or literature reviews, so no point submitting your literature review if you know that this journal doesn’t accept these types of work. So please read very carefully the author guidelines.

Sometimes the timing. Perhaps there has been a deluge of studies or articles published on a particular topic already. An example searching for Covid related work there is certainly true, so is your work timely, does it add something to the evidence base or is your work out of date. Perhaps I your own country context it might be innovative but it may not be the case internationally or in other countries so what is your work adding to the international evidence base.

It may be due to a lack of reviewers. Certainly, for my own journal during 2020/2021 we were aware that Covid had a massive impact on our reviewers and their time to conduct reviews whilst working clinically. Journals go to great lengths to secure reviewers though and often have a large pool of international and national reviewers (experts) are happy to review but sometimes timing ca be a factor.

However, on the positive.

As scholars we want to add to the evidence base, so its really important to support people to submit, that’s why for Doctoral and Masters level students, journals will accept or even have a separate section from these authors. So, think about your key messages from your manuscript and finally do persist, we have all had a rejection, where you think you have a paper that is absolutely brilliant and why would no one want to publish it, it just might mean it’s the wrong journal, wrong timing or other issues that you a address. So please do not give up, be patient.

Listen to Dr. Kathryn Hinsliff-Smith

..and so just to share 5 Top Tips for Publishing in a journal:

Tip Number 1 – Check the author guidance. All journals will have this, make sure you access this and read it thoroughly. Read before you submit your manuscript or even before you start to write your manuscript as this might change the focus for your manuscript.

Tip Number 2 – Agree the writing team and contribution. Agree your writing team, who are the authors this manuscript and what is their contribution going to be. Again, there is some very clear guidance around this aspect in terms of what is classed as contrition and don’t be afraid look at these and work with your collaborators and writing team to make sure that everyone who will be named on the article has fairly contributed. For most journals each author will be contacted to ask them to confirm their contribution.

Tip Number 3 – Check and review the latest evidence. In other words, you may ha a rejection because something is already recently published in the area ad your manuscript doesn’t add anything different and your work is superseded by other work. Check the actual chosen journal and if there is some work then do acknowledge how your work adds to this or takes the evidence in a different direction.

Tip Number 4 – Seek feedback before submitting. Speak to your colleagues get them to read your manuscript, you are living and breathing your work, sometimes it’s the obvious you may have missed. The journal Editors may pick this up but address it before as this will save you time in the long run.

And Tip Number 5 – be patient! I have described to you the process of going through with the editor, the handling editor, the reviewers, providing feedback to you for revisions, this all takes time. Some journals will indicate the average length of time. Predominantly I have been talking about standard submissions and not open access like GOLD open access which fast track submissions.

We hope that this is helpful, encourages you and doesn’t put you off to think about the next time you are preparing and producing your manuscript that you have thought about all these aspect’s. Thank you.