A scholarly rite of passage is learning to accept the frequency of rejection in academic life. Alas, many of us fret about what to do (and not do) after being turned down by a journal. Seasoned players in the “publish or perish” game know that a rejection is by no means proof that a manuscript lacks merit.
After all, only a limited number of submissions can be accepted at a time, with top-level journals rejecting up to 95 percent of the papers they receive. In a land of ever-proliferating journals, many of which are now being published online or in open-access formats, the conventional wisdom is that — assuming we have something interesting to say and keep revising and sending out papers — our work will be eventually published.
Still, one aspect that has received little attention in the “how to” literature of scholarly publishing could be summarized by these two questions: When is it worth the effort to appeal a rejection? And how should you frame the appeal letter?
Before I get hate mail from journal editors, please note that I am not suggesting you appeal every rejection. The likelihood of succeeding depends as much on the quality of your work as it does on your ability to argue that your piece deserves a second (or third!) chance.
If you asked your colleagues, most would probably recommend against lobbying journal editors to rescind their decisions, suggesting instead that you move on and resubmit elsewhere. Sometimes I have followed that advice, but I’ve also appealed rejection decisions — and succeeded. So I am offering insights here from the latter experience.
Make an informed decision. Before you decide to appeal a rejection, your first task is to soberly evaluate the merits of your manuscript vis-à-vis your ability to draw from it a few powerful points to use as rhetorical weapons against the reviewers’ criticism. Appealing a case will not be advisable when it is clear (based on the editor’s decision) that your work does not fit the goals of the journal, that your paper’s theories and methods are weak and unsupported by the related literature, and/or that your findings are reiterations of what is already known on the topic. In fact, most of the paper rejections I didn’t appeal fell into at least one of those categories.
Of course, most editors will argue that the time and effort you will spend writing an appeal letter could be put to better use. That is exactly the advice I once received from a journal in response to my initial query about whether I could appeal its negative verdict. My paper had already gone through a lengthy review process at the journal before being turned down. My rebuttal letter included the following paragraph: “For the past two years, I have carefully revised my manuscript by following all the useful comments and suggestions provided by two rounds of reviewers. Given the fact that sending my manuscript to another journal would entail starting the review process all over again, I would like to respectfully request a chance to appeal the journal’s negative decision on my piece.”
Eventually the journal granted my petition and, just a couple of months later, accepted my revised paper.
Be polite, and take the high road. You may think the journal’s editors and reviewers are incapable of doing their jobs. You may also want to respond to comments you see as nasty and outrageous with a little belligerence of your own. Don’t. No matter how convinced you are that your paper was unjustly rejected, always thank the editors and reviewers for their conscientious work in reading and commenting on it.
The more respectful your letter is, the more consideration you will be given — that is also the case when dealing with difficult revisions. I once wrote a paper on ethnographic self-reflexivity in which I made my immigrant status obvious (I am originally from Argentina). One of the reviewers advised me to “learn how to write in English first.” Rather than calling attention to my colleague’s xenophobic remark, my appeal letter assured the reviewers and editors alike that I had, in fact, worked with a professional proofreader and would do so in the future. Against the recommendation of that reviewer, my paper was finally accepted, and thereafter I made it a practice to mention my proofreader in submitting manuscripts. Needless to say, I have not since heard anything negative about my English proficiency.
Ask for an impartial judgment, not a shortcut. Don’t expect editors to accept your rebuttal at face value, nor try to convince them that you are right about the quality of your rejected work while everyone else who read it was wrong. Just ask for a chance to prove that your manuscript has merit and is supported by the theoretical and empirical tools of your field of expertise.
You could even politely ask to have yet another pair of eyes (or two pairs) to evaluate your manuscript. After all, the editor has already invested significant time and energy in considering your paper, and has little to lose — and much to gain — by soliciting just a couple of additional evaluators. Your appeal letter can simply remind the editor of that avenue.
Present facts, not opinions. A well-crafted appeal letter will note the key points that you think the editors and reviewers may have missed, misconstrued, or misunderstood. It will also point out (politely) when the reviewers have contradicted one another — something that is quite common. To be seriously considered, make sure your appeal follows these three rules:
- Substantiate the importance of your findings.
- Clearly state what the reviewers overlooked.
- Provide further evidence to support your claims.
I once had a paper rejected because of a single reviewer’s extremely negative evaluation. At the time, the literature on my topic (medical tourism in Argentina) was practically nonexistent. Yet this negative reviewer — allegedly an expert on global medical tourism — argued that my case study offered no new insights. In return, I wrote an appeal letter that presented concrete evidence of how Argentina had, indeed, become an emerging hub for medical tourists, a phenomenon that correlated with novel marketing practices (adding tango lessons to the cosmetic-surgery package to attract customers to Argentina) by the international health-care industry. I also conducted additional research and found that, between the time I initially submitted my paper and the date I received the rejection letter, a handful of papers on my topic were already either in press or published.
In my appeal, I wrote: “Since few articles exist on medical tourism in Argentina, which is perhaps due to this country’s incipient role in the medical-tourism industry, the third reviewer may have missed its importance as an emerging market, including the marketing of tango as a pleasurable component in the medical-tourism equation.” Then I cited the work of a renowned colleague whose recent book had made an argument similar to mine. After another short round of revisions, my paper was finally accepted.
Turning a negative into a win-win. As you can tell by now, I respectfully disagree with those who assert that writing an appeal letter is an ineffectual way to change the fate of a rejected manuscript. In some cases, an appeal can actually work. Yet there is no one-size-fits-all recipe to flipping a rejection decision in your favor. Just use your best judgment and common sense in deciding whether to challenge a rejection.
Yes, the editors may well reject your appeal, as has happened to me more than once. But crafting a meticulous appeal letter can still be useful in revising your paper for submission elsewhere. You could, and should, use the same arguments you framed in your letter to prove the timeliness, importance, and uniqueness of your work. The appeal can ease your revision process and help your paper get much closer to the “accepted” mark the next time you send it out for review.