Updated August 23rd, 2023

In recent articles, we talked about how to write a scientific paper and how to write a rebuttal letter. However, before being able to write a rebuttal letter, you first need your research to be considered for publication. Although this may seem easy given the large number of journals out there, it is actually not.

Getting your research rejected the first times really hurts. But over time you will get used to the feeling. You will understand that rejection of research is part of the process. However, there are a few things that will get your submitted manuscript rejected faster than others. In this article, I will therefore discuss major mistakes that will get your research rejected right away.

1. Poor Structure of Your Manuscript

The first thing, any editor or reviewer will see of your manuscript is its structure. If your manuscript does not look appealing and has major flaws, it will not be considered for publication. You should know the basic structure of a scientific manuscript. Place headings, paragraphs, references, tables and figures in their proper locations. Furthermore:

• Read the author guidelines and follow them
• Use page breaks – readers love white space
• Make it look professional (consistent font, font size, spacing etc.)

2. Spelling and Grammatical Errors

The language of science is English. Therefore, it is important that you deliver a well-written manuscript without too many errors. However, most scientists (myself included) are not native speakers. As a reviewer, I suggested the rejection (or major revision) of many submissions, where I simply could not understand the content properly. Make sure that your submission is error-free (or contains only a few errors) and edited properly.

There are a lot of great services out there that can quickly help getting your scientific manuscript corrected and revised properly. I personally can recommend PaperTrue, if you want to try it out, use the code INSIGHTS10 for a 10% discount.

Naturally, there are also free AI tools such as DeeplWrite. However, be aware that the text these tools produce is, by definition, AI-generated. Therefore, it may be subject to AI-detectors or plagiarism checkers. If you want to avoid this, I strongly recommend sticking to human editing and proofreading services.

3. Plagiarism in your Scientific Manuscript

Especially when writing the introduction and discussion of your manuscript, you need to cite other studies. However, you should always do so in your own words. Never simply copy and paste results or conclusions from other papers.

Most journals will check your work for plagiarism. Before submitting, you must make sure that your content is original. Sometimes, you may not be aware of plagiarized content. For example, if several people are involved in your project and in preparing of the manuscript. Furthermore, if you are using the same method for multiple studies, make sure to not copy and paste the methods section.

Checking for plagiarism can easily be done online. Tools such as PlagiaShield enable to detect not only plagiarized content in written texts but it can also directly implemented in to the ChatGPT output.

4. The Use of Generative AI in Scientific Manuscripts

There are many helpful ways in which you can use generative AI such as ChatGPT in scientific writing. However, you should do it with a brain. Never just copy and paste the output into your manuscript. And if you have to, you have to cite it properly. I am increasingly reading in the submission guidelines of various journals that the use of generative AI needs to be declared.

To date there is no standardized way to detect AI written content. In my experience, it is not sure if and how journals are checking for AI content in your scientific manuscript. However, there are many online tools such as WinstonAI that allow to detect AI content.

Try WinstonAI to detect AI content in your scientific manuscript.

5. Missing Parts will get your Research Rejected

When you approve your manuscript or PDF (in the Editorial Manager) for submission, read it carefully! If you forgot to upload a figure or a table is missing, your manuscript will be rejected. If you´re lucky, you will get a notice that something is missing, along with a chance to resubmit your work. Often, however, your work may be rejected.

More than once I received a paper for peer review that clearly lacked discussion or interpretation of important parts of the data. Sometimes tables were missing or figures were incomplete. In these cases, I was not able to complete my review and was left with the suggestion to reject the paper.

6. Lack of Novelty in your Submitted Research

Disclaimer: I am aware that novelty is a very subjective term.

Although there are some studies that are clearly novel, there are many others, where this can be debated at length. Many journals want the peer-reviewer to give an estimation on novelty. Often, this depends heavily on how well the reviewers and editors know the current literature. However, if you copied the methods of a previously published study and are reporting the same results, this may well be a good reason of your research being rejected immediately.

7. Poor Experimental/Statistical Design of Your Scientific Study

Before your are starting to conduct any scientific study, you should have a detailed plan, especially if you´re the PI of the study. You should not only include a timeline but also a profound description of the methods in your planning phase. If you finished collecting your data and have written up your paper, it is a lot of work to change methods or add samples. For example, I received papers where the authors clearly failed to perform a prior power analysis.

As a result, the sample size was far too small to make reliable statements. All of the drawn conclusions and the discussion of the results are affected by this. In such a case, your paper will be rejected with the query to perform a power analysis and add more patients/measurements.

Furthermore, you need to make sure that the data are analyzed appropriately. Statistical analyses are important to make well-founded statements. However, if you have used them inappropriately, it will reflect poorly on your entire manuscript. For example, if you use the wrong tests (e.g., parametric tests on nonparametric data), the conclusions you draw may be incorrect and thus your scientific manuscript will be rejected in peer-review (or even right away).

Conclusion

Keep these important points in mind, when you are planning to submit your next scientific paper. And don’t get discouraged. Every researcher will get papers rejected. For example, one of my two papers on anemia detection on CT scans has been rejected three times. The argument of the radiology journals was point 6 in this list – lack of novelty.

Although we conducted a larger prospective study to confirm the findings of our preliminary analysis, this can be a reason for rejection for some journals. In the end, we were able to publish our results. Perseverance is an important trait if you want to publish your research.

Happy writing!

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