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.