Saturday, November 16, 2013

Editorial Discretion

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?