REJECTED

"Every rejection brings you one step closer to publication"

"Rejection is the norm in academic publishing"

"30-50% of articles don't even make it to peer review"

Those of you who follow me on twitter will have seen that I recently submitted my first article as a PhD student for publication. The good news is that unlike some journals the journal I submitted to was quite quick at getting back to me. The not so great news is that it was one of the 30-50% that didn't even make it to peer review.

Although you know and understand that this is the likely outcome. It still is hard news to read. I put considerable time and effort into that manuscript and my supervisors and peers all thought it was good. But not the editor. Well that's one way to look at it.

Or was it that it wasn't a great fit to the journal. I followed the advice of ThinkWrite and researched the journal out ahead of time. I followed the steps and shaped my article so that fit. But I'm not that editor, so maybe it didn't fit as good as I thought. Or maybe there was some other reason. It doesn't take away that my supervisors and peers think that it is worth publishing.

Weirdly, for once my impostor monster didn't attack. I didn't see this rejection as personal or that my manuscript was bad. My heart went "it is just not the right journal". Was I still a little sad, definitely! But by the next day I'd taken a look at some other journals and picked one that I think will fit my manuscript. So next week I'll revise it to fit with the author guidelines of this new journal and send it out again.

This PhD thing is all about perseverance....as one my supervisors wrote to me: