Rejection of rejection: a novel approach to overcoming barriers to publication

Having also suffered the painful and repeated sting of unjust article rejection, we read with great interest the offering from Chapman & Slade. Their approach has much to recommend it and we commend them on their initiative. However, we note some important shortcomings and propose extending the approach to improve efficiency.

We see value in a pro-active approach to rejection of article rejection, and therefore we propose the ‘Pro-Active Rejection of Rejection’ (PAROR) Approach. This approach aims to overcome the inefficiency in the Chapman and Slade system by eliminating the waiting time between submission and rejection and it would also save the journals the time and effort required in generating their rejection form letter. By acting in advance of rejection, our proposal also caters to manuscripts (to be) rejected without review.

The main feature of our approach is to include some important elements of the Chapman and Slade rejection of rejection letter, with some modest modifications, in the letter with the original article submission, thereby extending their ground-breaking work to improve efficiency.

Our suggestions are as follows:

• Replace the first line “Thank you for your rejection…” with “In the event of your rejection of the above manuscript we thank you for the work involved in activation of your automatic email generation process. We provide the following as a service to save you the time and resources involved therein.”
• Remove the paragraph beginning “In terms of specific factors…”
• Include the suggestion to the editor about to whom the rejection could be directed as this is truly efficient from an editor's perspective.

Finally, we note that the PAROR approach is only in its infancy and more empirical evidence is needed before it can be implemented on a universal scale.

To the Editor,

We read with great interest the letter by Chapman and Slate in which they propose a novel method to overcoming barriers in scientific publication. [1] Despite its novelty we are appalled by the alarmingly high rate of 30% of rejection acceptance authors propose.

Our group have long established rejection acceptance rate of less than 10% and we are now striving to move as much closer to 5% as possible. Currently, we only accept rejection of a manuscript in exceptional cases of high interest for scientific public, such as submission of the empty manuscript or submission of the manuscript with more than 42 co-authors (as 42 is the answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe and everything, therefore having more than 42 co-authors would render the manuscript as impossibly improbable). [2, 3]

Also, we would like to further improve the process of sumbission with the additional option provided to the submitting authors. We propose adding a simple check-box titled “Forward to post-production without delay” within all of the conventional online submission systems which would allow both authors and editors to cirumvent the usual peer-review process and send the manuscript directly to post-production team in order to prepare the draft for immediate online publication. We dare to suggest that this improvement would reduce the risk of rejection to the minimum.

We expect journal editors to accept our proposed and much needed changes in these turbulent times of unnecessary manuscript rejections and we also inform editors of BMJ that we are unable to accept the rejection of this letter since we have far exceeded our rejection quota for this year.

Prof Nermin Salkic, MD, PhD
Prof Enver Zerem, MD, PhD
Assoc Prof Predrag Jovanovic, MD, PhD

Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology
University Clinical Center Tuzla
Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina
snermin@gmail.com

Bibliography
1 Chapman C, Slade T. Rejection of rejection: a novel approach to overcoming barriers to publication. BMJ. 2015;351:h6326. doi:10.1136/bmj.h6326
2 Adams D. The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Del Rey Books, 2014.
3 Wikipedia. 42 (number). The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Available at: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/42_(number)#The_Hitchhiker.27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy

The title is appropriate as the high impact journals do not give statistics of rejection rates, and thus rejection should always be based on a sound and ethical peer review without publication bias, a well known phenomenon. ATK has authored a publication examining barriers for research among 2 medical faculties of prestigious medical schools in Delhi. They found a major barrier to be rejections making people lose interest in publishing research findings, ultimately resulting in low output. There is a need for serious introspection and corrective action to increase publication from developing countries by playing a proactive role in the form of mentoring.

I foresee a small drawback to the strategy gently described by the authors: the editor may reply with a rejection to the rejection of rejection. This could lead to an ad infinitum paradox requiring strong nuclear forces to intervene on behalf of the future of scientific progress.

Personally, I always read with interest a rejection letter, particularly the part about “please do not be discouraged to submit further manuscripts to our journal”… This wording is much kinder than the rejections I collected during my younger days from never-to-be girlfriends, which did not, indeed, encourage any further submission. After all, in retrospect, nothing burns with a brighter flame than the love of an editor towards their never-to-be authors.