Adherence to Author Guidelines
Some errors may seem trivial. Unfortunately, such errors are all too
common and impact the suitability (perceived or real) of a manuscript
for publication in a particular journal. For example, manuscripts are
often rejected because of a failure to understand or follow the Author
Guidelines. I often reject manuscript simply because its subject does
not fit the journal’s mandate. Consider the Journal of Evaluation in
Clinical Practice (JECP), which caters primarily to a health services
research readership. Manuscripts that present a clinical case study or a
clinical issue that informs only to a very specialized group of
clinicians are often rejected, as are reports regarding laboratory
studies and/or animal research, because they are not appropriate for the
JECP audience. It is likely that if the editor considers those
manuscripts further the author will not get a high quality review (which
may result in not catching important errors prior to publication), and
the work will have a reduced chance of reaching the community that can
most benefit from the research. One strategy I find that helps in
choosing which journal to submit my work is looking at where the
literature I am citing is published – journals that have a track record
of publishing on the subject are more likely to have the appropriate
readership and reviewer base. Another reason a manuscript is rejected
outright is that it has not been formatted according to the journal’s
instructions or does not fit one of the listed manuscript categories.
Manuscripts not formatted according to the journal’s requirements give
the editor the impression that the author does not care about the
quality of the work, and/or that the work has been rejected from another
journal, the latter of which raises a red flag as to what is the problem
that led to the rejection. It seems to me a bad idea to prime the reader
to assume there is an important flaw in the submitted work. Likewise,
submitting a commentary to a journal that states in the author
guidelines that such is reserved for invited authors, or substantially
exceeding the stated maximum length give the impression that the author
lacks attention to detail; some might consider attention to detail a
virtue of a competent scientist and good scholarship.