Speaker 1: What are the potential outcomes when you submit a journal article? Stick around and find out today on this episode of Navigating Academia. Music What's up everybody? My name is Dr. J. Phoenix Singh. I want to welcome you to Navigating Academia, your leading source for career guidance on how to be able to progress in academia. As always, I appreciate the love, so please do like and share this video with your colleagues and your students. Subscribe to our channel, hit that bell, and comment below. You can follow us at the social media accounts below. So, today we're going to be talking about the potential outcomes when you decide to take the plunge and submit your article to a peer-reviewed academic journal. This can be a very daunting process, especially if it's your first go-around, even if you're very experienced. These articles that you've been working on, usually you don't work on them for a month. You could be working on these things for years. And this is your baby, and I completely understand that. And to give your baby to somebody else, and for them to be like, eh, that's okay, and just give your baby back, doesn't feel very good. Especially if it's something where the peer-review process can take time. It can take six months, it can even take a year for bigger journals. And because of this, it's something where you can get real frustrated submitting something, waiting for what seems like forever to get feedback from the peer reviewers. And then they say, we're just not into it, and you don't even get a chance to respond. But at the end of the day, what we're going to be talking about today is the two-step process of what can the outcomes be when you submit that journal article. Now the reason I say it's a two-step process is because when you initially submit your article, it's going to go to the editor of the journal. And they're going to look at it and basically do a pretty rapid screen of it to say this either has a general fit for the journal or not. And they're going to be taking a look at things like, you know, is the article even in our field? Is it an area that has maybe sufficient interest for their readership? Because they're going to know the demographics of the people who are reading their stuff. Is it written and organized in a way that meets the instructions for authors for that journal? And we're going to make another video on that in terms of making sure that before you submit, you can maximize the likelihood that your piece will, if not only get through that screen, end up getting published. So be sure to check out that video as well. I'll post a link down in the description below. Now after the editor has had a chance to be able to take a look at it, they're going to give it to an associate editor for the journal. That associate editor is going to assign peer reviewers, usually folks on that journal's editorial board, or if the people there either don't have the time, don't have the expertise that's very unique to your piece, they're going to send it out for review for other people who are considered experts in whatever field you happen to be in. And then that peer review process starts. The peer reviewer is going to get the piece, they're going to be expected to read it in detail, provide you with comprehensive comments that you're going to need to respond to afterwards. And the idea is that it's really going to sharpen your piece and it's really kind of a quality control mechanism for the journal, making sure that the stuff that actually ends up getting published, not only is really high quality and hence makes the journal look good, but these publishers of these journals, they're for-profit businesses most of the time. And this is how they make money. They make money by selling your articles or by having this journal as part of a package where they're selling different institutions or facilities, for example, a prison or could be anything from Tufts University where I did my undergrad work, their library and these things. And in some cases, even individuals buy subscriptions to these kind of package deals. So it's really important that the piece that they end up publishing be of high quality to make that journal look good, to make that publisher money. And also the hope obviously is that that piece is going to get cited and the impact factor of that journal is going to significantly increase. So the peer reviewers do their thing. They end up submitting their recommendations for either acceptance or rejection to the associate editor who sends it up to the editor. And the editor ends up making that final call as to whether or not to accept the piece or not. But they really rely on the associate editor here to kind of make that decision, but they're the end gatekeepers of everything. So usually the associate editor is the first one who's going to take a look at those peer reviewer comments. And either they or the editor is going to assign one of five different outcomes. And so those are the things that we're going to be briefly going through today. Number one is accept. And we're talking here about accept without revision. This is not only the chupacabra of journal review outcomes, it's something where you should be really puzzled if you get this. No article has no revisions that would make it better. There is no such thing as a perfect submission. If the peer reviewers come back and say, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread, don't change a word, don't change anything, just publish it straight up. Again, alarm bells should be going out because it really suggests that the peer reviewers didn't do their job. Which could be a really critical thing to say, but it's true. It's something where you really need to make sure that the peer review process is improving your writing, improving your piece. It's one of the reasons why the peer review process exists, remember, is to be able to sharpen that piece up. And to make it of even higher quality. So if it's just accepted straight up, that's a really bad sign. And you should really consider whether you want that piece in that journal. But of course we will be talking about in another video the times where it is versus the majority of times where it's not appropriate to be able to pull a journal article out. And I'll link that also in the description below, that video. So it's really important to take this into consideration, guys. And the second outcome is related, but it's basically accept with minor revision. And this is, if you have got accept with minor revision, kudos to you. Really, I bow down because this is a very rare outcome. And especially for higher impact journals, it very rarely happens. I'm talking about a real minority percentage. Maximum 5-10% of articles, we're going to get this treatment. And really what it suggests is that the piece is in great shape, it needs some minor polishing. But the peer reviewers are recommending to the associate editor and editor, this is a piece you want. Let them do some polishing in terms of let the authors do their thing. But then you need to accept this piece. Because it's going to make a big contribution, it's going to make the journal look good. And it is worthwhile to be able to be part of the literature. And you should be very humbled and almost honored to be able to get this decision. It's a big deal. And I really congratulate you if this has happened or happens to you in the future. So that's outcome number two. Outcome number three is to accept with major revision. And this is really par for the course. Either accept with major revision or outcome four that we'll talk about in a moment, which is revise and resubmit. But accept with major revision is a really great sign as well. Again, focus on the accept part and not on the major revision part. Very rarely do peer reviewers, even if they give minor revisions in terms of their comments, very rarely do they give the recommendation of accept with minor revision. It's almost something where they want you as the author to accept that the piece is good. But it ain't that good to be able to do accept with minor revision. They're really trying to give you as the author the message that we love the piece. It's got a lot of potential. Make these changes and then you're good to go. Very rarely are you going to have to go through a second peer review process if you get accept with major revision, let alone accept with minor revision. That basically doesn't happen. In most cases, the associate editor is going to look at it, give it the yay or nay, and then send it up to the editor for the final approval. So that's accept with major revision. Outcome number four is revise and resubmit. This is pretty common, I would say. It's unfortunate if you end up getting this because it usually means that the piece is essentially rejected, but the journal's open to publishing it if you make a lot of changes and then they're going to put you through another peer review, usually. And it could be with the same peer reviewers. Usually peer reviewers are even asked during their submission process for their comments, would you be opening to re-reviewing the piece? And they can choose yes or no. But revise and resubmit basically means that, again, they're open to it, but the piece isn't there yet for them to seriously consider accepting it. This is a really common thing for people to end up making this decision. They don't want to say reject because maybe the piece, you know, there's a realm of possibility you could make it good, but right now they're not going to give the green light, they're not going to give the thumbs up on it. So that's revise and resubmit. If you get it, don't feel too upset, alright? It happens to everybody, it's certainly happened to me many times. And you can decide then, do you want to resubmit to that journal, or do you want to go to another journal? You can even be straightforward, especially if you know the associate editor, whether, you know, professionally or personally. You can just let them know, you know, do you think this is a piece that's worthwhile if I, you know, really take care of all these comments the peer reviewers gave and resubmit it to you? Do you think it has a fighting chance, or, you know, just be straight with me, do you think it's something where I explore a different outlet? Just ask, especially if it's a really high impact journal, maybe worth revising and resubmitting if they say, yeah, it's actually not a bad piece, I would give it serious consideration if you resubmitted it and it went through another peer review process. So that's outcome number four. Finally, outcome number five, it's an unfortunate outcome, it's certainly happened to me on some papers, it's just straight up rejection. It's not revise and resubmit, certainly neither of the except options. It's just straight up reject. You know, the peer reviewers look at it and for whatever reason, they're like, this just is not adequate. Remember the associate editor and the editor, they're probably not going to be experts in your niche, but the editorial board members who are, or the folks who they end up referring out to, if no associate editor, sorry, if no editorial board member is perfect for your piece, they may have a lot better sense whether or not you're really making a contribution or it's something where they've peer reviewed stuff of yours in the past. And this is what's called a salami, meaning that it's basically, you know, you take in a data set that you have and you've been mining that data set, publishing all kinds of stuff from it. And they're like, I've already reviewed stuff from this data set, you know, this is such a minor set of analyses, doesn't contribute a lot. And to be honest with you, the researcher should have just put this into the main article that they published on that data set. Because otherwise it's something where, you know, you go to five journals, find five pieces on the same data set by the same authors. It doesn't really give you a good reputation as a researcher and you should know that going in. All right, y'all. Thank you so much for watching this episode. I want to hear from you in the comments below. Are you nervous about submitting your articles because of the possibility of rejection? And what strategies are you using, or maybe that you've used in the past to be able to overcome this? Remember that we're all a community here in academia. Let's share our stories. Let's talk about what's helped us. And let's really pay it forward because all of us in academia have had folks who've helped us in the past as well. Don't forget to like and share this video with your colleagues and students. Subscribe and follow us on social media. If you're interested in one-on-one career mentoring in academia, please do set up a consultation call with me via the website below. And let's see how I can help you get to the top of your field. I'm signing off, everybody. Have a great day. And remember to get out there, take chances, and be your best self. Thank you so much for stopping by, everyone. It's a pleasure to have you here as always. If you enjoyed this video and you'd like to see more in this series on navigating academia, please click on one of these links over here to be able to view more original content. I hope to see you there.