Reasons for rejection

Rejection of a paper refers to the decision of the Editor of a scientific Journal not to accept the submitted manuscript for publication in that Journal. This condition may occur in any phase of the paper evaluation process, but mostly occurs at the end of the first round of the peer-review process, i.e. when one of two experts, asked for their independent opinion, suggest reasons for acceptance, revision or rejection of the manucript. Typically, in the case of a negative peer-review, the Associate Editor expresses a recommendation (e.g., reject) for the Editor-in-Chief, who takes the final decision. The rejection rate of a Journal, i.e. the ratio of the number of rejected to the number of evaluated manuscripts, has been seen to increase over the last years in many well-reputed scientific Journals, also in the case of medical physics Journals, and this has caused concern both in the Journal's Editorial Boards, and in the authors' community. For example, for the Journal Physica Medica (European Journal of Medical Physics, EJMP) the rejection rate is such that only about one manuscript out of three is accepted for publication. This has then prompted various actions from scientific Publishers and Journal Editors, in order to increase the awareness of the authors toward the scientific writing best practice, the peer-review process and the Journals' whole paper evaluation process. This presentation, by the Editor-in-Chief of EJMP, indicates possible reasons for paper rejection, based on the presenter's experience as an author, as a reviewer, as Associate Editor and as Editor of a scientific Journal in medical physics. These reasons may include lack of proper English writing, lack of motivations or originality, weaknesses in the methodological aspects or in the significance of the findings and other specific reasons, which overall may indicate a general lack of convincing strength of the manuscript. Since publishing in a well-reputed scientific Journal is a competition for the acquisition of the consensus in the Journal's audience, and hence in the corresponding scientific community, toward the work carried out in the specific study, lack of strength of a manuscript  for one or more of the above reasons  invariably leads to paper rejection. Ultimately, the efforts by the scientific community toward reaching the best practice in scientific writing and evaluation, will hopefully produce a reduced Journals' rejection rate, and most importantly, an improved efficacy of the research work, for the benefit of the scientific and social progess.