What happens to an article after it has been submitted to a journal?

This post came out of a workshop I ran in May 2018 with a group of doctoral students, where we discussed academic publishing. One of the themes that came up in the discussion was that many of them felt reasonably confident when it came to writing about their research, but they were apprehensive about whatever happens after they submit their article for publication. The reasons, it seems, were because this aspect of publishing is out of the authors’ control, but also because this process is rather opaque. To help address these concerns, I have put together some information about what happens to articles after you submit them to an academic journal for consideration.

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Initial editorial screening

When a journal receives a manuscript, the first thing that happens is that the editor (or an associate editor) screens it for suitability. Their role, at this stage, is to ensure that:

• The topic fits the scope of the journal. For example, the journal I (co)edited, Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, focuses on topics like language acquisition, teaching practices, applied linguistics etc., so we could not accept papers on, say, literary criticism. This may sound obvious, but some authors seem to misunderstand the remit of the journals to which they submit, and others just submit articles randomly, which results in some odd submissions.
• The format, language and length of the submission are consistent with the expectations of the journal. You should be able to find this information in the webpage of the journal, often under the heading ‘Author Guidelines’ or something similar. Again, this might sound obvious, but if a journal only publishes articles, they will not consider book reviews, theses, poems, fictionalised dialogues, and so on.
• There are no obvious omissions. The editor will also check that the submission is not missing pages, appendices, tables, and so on. Some common mistakes include submitting the list of references as a separate document, or not attaching tables etc.
• There are no obvious ethical violations. Practices and thresholds vary, but most journals are becoming more and more cautious about publishing research that has not complied with commonly accepted standards of ethical rigour. If there are serious ethical questions about a study (e.g., intervention studies with minors conducted without evidence of ethical approval), the editor may decide that the article is unpublishable. This may sound harsh, but it serves to protect both the journal and the author from the increasingly common embarrassment of a public retraction.
• There are no procedural problems. This involves checking that the author is not violating the journal’s policy. Some examples of such behaviour include resubmit an unrevised version of a previously rejected article, possibly with a new title, or exceeding a publication quota (e.g., submitting more than one article per year, or whatever policy the journal has in place).
• If the journal uses double-blind review (see below), the editor will also make sure that there is no identifying information in the manuscript, which can reveal the author’s identity. In addition to removing the name of the authors, most journals will request that you also remove references to your own previously published work, or replace them with phrases like (Author, 2018; Author1 & Author2, 2017; or Author & colleagues, 2015).¹

If a papers is obviously unpublishable or very unlikely to survive peer-review, the editor will reject it. This is sometimes called a “desk rejection”. The remaining papers are then sent to peer reviewers. This page has a useful checklist of things you should watch out for in order to avoid a desk rejection.

Selecting peer reviewers

If the editor believes that there are no serious problems with the manuscript, they will forward an anonymised version of your paper to two or three qualified academics (the peer reviewers) who weigh in on its publication potential.

Peer reviewers have two roles. One is to help you, the authors, to present your work in the best possible way. To do this, they will identify any weaknesses in your article, and suggest ways to improve the paper. Sometimes this role also requires the peer reviewers to prevent you from coming forward into public discourse with ideas that are not ready for sharing. Their second role is to protect the integrity of the scholarly record. In this sense, they are like gate-keepers, whose job is to ensure that journals only publish papers when they meet a threshold of academic rigour.

In more prosaic terms, peer reviewers help editors decide which articles to publish. They do so by carefully reading your work, and evaluating its novelty, rigour, and clarity. It is not normally part of a peer-reviewer’s remit to copy-edit your work, or check it for plagiarism, but many do.

Types of peer review

There are many different types of peer review. The most important distinctions connect to whether the reviewers and the authors are known to each other, or whether their names are confidential.

• Single-blind review: reviewers know the authors’ identity; authors do not know reviewers;
• Double-blind review: reviewers and authors are unaware of each others’ identity;
• Open peer review: reviewers and authors are aware of each others’ identity (sometimes this information is revealed post-publication).

Who can review your article?

Editors send articles to reviewers who have expertise in the field of the study. These might be the world’s leading experts on a topic, or they could be scholars whose work you quote, and (let’s be honest) sometimes they are graduate students or research assistants doing the work of more senior academics.

In most cases, however, peer-reviewers are academics who are knowledgeable about the field, but do not have expert knowledge in all aspects of the paper. What this means is that feedback from peer reviewers is different from the kind of feedback you can expect from a thesis supervisor, with whom you are likely to inhabit the same disciplinary subfield, and who is likely to be much more knowledgeable than you are. It is very important to keep this in mind when writing your article, so that you can frame your study in the broad discourse of the field, and anchor it appropriately to reference points that make sense to likely reviewers.

Who cannot review your article

The editor is likely to exclude from the pool of potential reviewers anyone who works in the same university or the same research project as you do. This ensures that there should be no suspicion of bias. People who have already read your manuscript or are familiar with your work are also unsuitable for reviewers, for similar ethical reasons. It is your responsibility to let the editor know about any such cases.

If you have reason to believe that specific individuals might be unfair reviewers, you can ask the editor not to consider them. This is more frequently an issue in the sciences and medical research, where publishing is more competitive, but if you have legitimate reason to doubt the impartiality of some potential reviewers, you need to share these concerns with the editor in the cover letter when you submit. That said, the editor may decide to overrule your concerns.

The peer review process

A reviewer will typically receive an invitation to review your article, which will include your title and abstract (but, normally, not your name). An established, research-active academic might receive several such invitations every month, and will only agree to review the ones that are most promising, based on their initial reading of the abstract. This is why it is very important that you use the abstract to state very explicitly what is original and noteworthy about your study, rather than assume that your research ‘will speak for itself’, and that everything will become clear once the editor reads the entire paper. Unclear, hastily-written abstracts are quite difficult to place with reviewers, and the process of finding qualified readers could take weeks. The LSE Impact Blog has good advice on writing effective abstracts.

What do reviewers look for?

Sometimes the editor will ask reviewers to comment on specific aspects of a paper, possibly using pre-defined rating scales. Other editors request more open-ended reviews. Generally speaking, most reviewers will critically read your paper with the following questions in mind:

• Does the literature review point to a gap in the literature?
• Is this gap worth investigating?
• Do the research questions correspond to the gap identified?
• Are the methods / sample appropriate for the questions?
• What are the strengths and limitations of the methods used?
• Is it clear how the data were generated using these methods?
• Does the paper engage with the ‘So what?’ and ‘Now what?’ questions?

The amount of time reviewers spend on a paper varies. It usually takes me one or two evenings; other people I know have told me it takes them anything from a few hours to a few days. This often depends on the quality of the manuscript, too. The best and worst ones are easiest to process. On the other hand, promising but problematic papers often require extensive comments and a considerable investment in time. Personal reviewing styles are also different: some reviewers only offer broad comments, whereas others are more likely to micro-edit, and this will have an impact on turnaround time. Either way, it is reasonable to assume that the journal will receive a review between 6 and 8 weeks after assigning a paper to a reviewer.

The reviewer report

After reading the paper, every reviewer will send the editor a report. This is likely to consist of three parts:

• A recommendation regarding the article’s suitability for publication. Often reviewers select from a range of predetermined options, like ‘accept’, ‘revise’, ‘reject’ etc. (see below for more about that). Depending on the journal’s policy, the authors might receive this information, or maybe not.
• A section with comments to the author(s). This is probably the largest part of the review. It might range in length from a couple of paragraphs to a couple of pages. Some reviewers divide the ‘comments to the author’ section in two main parts, according to importance: main points and minor suggestions. Others list their comments in a list mirroring the structure of the text. Some reviewers also use their word processor’s commenting function to record their remarks directly on the paper, rather than writing a report.
• A confidential section with comments to the editor. This section of the review may alert the editor about any concerns the reviewer has, that they are not comfortable sharing publicly. For instance, they may recommend a more thorough plagiarism check, provide a rationale for their recommendation, or use explicit language to clarify the more diplomatically formulated remarks they wrote to the authors. Not all reviews contain such comments; in fact, most reviews I have written/read did not include this section.

The editorial decision

After taking into account the reviewers’ recommendations, the editor will reach a decision. This is likely to be in line with the recommendations, but does not necessarily have to be the same. The editorial decision is likely to be one of the following four:

Rejection

Papers can be rejected for a number of reasons, such as poor fit with the scope of the journal, failure to point out what is original about the study, lack of clarity in the way the arguments are put forward, or questionable research practices. Some editors distinguish between different types of rejections (e.g., ‘submit elsewhere’, ‘no hope’), so it is important to read though the lines of the rejection letter. Generally, most studies that have been conducted in good faith (i.e., without serious lapses in rigour or ethics) can be published eventually, even after an initial rejection. You can do this done either by submitting to a more appropriate journal, or by using the feedback to improve the way you report your study.

Request for major revisions

This decision means that the editor and reviewers believe that the study reported in the paper is fundamentally sound and worth publishing, but needs more work. For instance, they might believe that you need to develop your theoretical framework more, or that you have to reanalyse some data, or that you have to expand some parts of the paper and delete others. Papers with major revisions are normally sent out for review once again, sometimes to a new set of reviewers. A ‘revise and resubmit’ with major revisions is definitely not a guarantee that the journal will publish your paper, but it means that you are getting there.

Request for minor revisions

This decision means that the editor probably wants to see the paper published in the journal, but not before you have addressed some stylistic, formatting or other minor points. Usually, papers with minor revisions are reevaluated by the editor, rather than being sent out for an additional round of review. A request for minor revisions is still not a promise to publish your paper, but the odds look good.

Acceptance

It is extremely uncommon for a journal to unconditionally publish a paper without revisions (typically, this will only happen with invited articles). However, if it does happen, then there’s no reason not to rejoice!

More likely than not, the email with the editorial decision will also contain any comments made by the peer reviewers or at least a selection of these remarks that the editor feels are most constructive. Accepting such criticism is not always easy (as I have written here), but it usually results in a better paper.

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Before you go: I hope that you found this post useful, but if you have any additional thoughts or questions that I have not addressed, do add a comment or send me a message. If you arrived at this page because you’re planning to submit an article, I wish you good luck with your publishing endeavours. Also, do feel free to use the social sharing buttons below to share this content with anyone who may find it helpful. 

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