After a nice start to my career as the PI on manuscripts, I've recently run into significant road bumps. For some reason, all of my manuscripts are being rejected by editors without review. Now, I know this is common practice for glam mags, but since when is this the case for society level journals? I'd like to think that I have pretty good judgement for where I'm submitting the work. I regularly read and review for these journals. I know the other readers and people that publish in these places. When I presented these results at conferences, I've gotten some very positive comments from top people in the field about how cool the work is. So what gives? Am I being penalized for being a new PI? Are solid, interesting, reproducible data now not enough for decent journals? Have they become complete slaves to the impact factor? Or is my work derivative and inconsequential and no one is willing to tell me in person? My "mentors" think I'm cool. Who else can I ask about these things?
Sorry you are not getting more responses on this post, because I'd like to hear some opinions on this, also. I've had some recent submissions rejected at the editorial level by journals with IFs around 5. It would be nice to at least get these into the hands of some referees and get some assessment of the quality and novelty of the work rather than a flat-out rejection with little reason given.
ReplyDeleteAm I being penalized for being a new PI?
ReplyDeleteProbably. Some journals are really very incrowd-ish. Also, you may need to work on your cover letters, though; some places really put a lot of weight on the cover letter.