JOURNALS’ CLASSICAL REASONS FOR REJECTION OF MANUSCRIPTS
Journals generally reject manuscripts for the following reasons:
- Incompliance with the Aims and Scope of the journal
- Simultaneous evaluation by another journal
- Not written in an easily understandable form
- Non-compliance with the writing style of the journal
- Make no contribution to the journal
- Make no contribution to advancement in the field
- Lack a clear or new hypothesis
- Failure to include supportive evidence in achieving results
- Include weak analyses
- Written using a wrong or outdated research methodology
- Include inconclusive findings
- Failure to answer the questions proposed by the hypothesis
- Violate the research ethics
- Manuscript is too long or too short
- Lack the qualifications of a scientific manuscript
- Language inadequacies
- Failure to introduce any innovation regarding the relevant topic
- Non-compliance with the standards of the journal and, in general, with academic writing
- Theoretical weaknesses
- Poor presentation
Peer-review is affected by many other factors apart from those given above, such as the obligation to accept a certain number of manuscripts, which means many qualified studies have to be eliminated due to this restriction. Furthermore, studies are generally less likely to be accepted on the first submission try. In addition to these, fundamental errors in terminology can also lead to the rejection of a study. The use of consistent, clear, and explicit terminology in long studies will reduce the possibility of criticism in this respect.