Hits and Misses

The past 6 months has been a crazy one for me in my work. Supported by an army of serfs bright, motivated undergraduates, I collected enough *interesting* data to submit manuscripts to several different high-impact-factor peer reviewed journals. This is my most productive year so far. We got the first one accepted quickly after making the minor revisions requested by the anonymous reviewers. The second submission was to one of the Glamour Mags, and our manuscript was rejected.

Dear takchek:

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to Glamor Magazine. Because your manuscript was not given a high enough priority rating during the initial screening process, we were not able to send it out for in-depth review. Although your analysis is interesting and novel and your application represents a tour de force in (your sub-field), we feel that the scope and focus of your paper make it more appropriate for a more specialized journal. We are therefore notifying you so that you can seek publication elsewhere.

We now receive many more interesting papers than we can publish. We therefore send for in-depth review only those papers most likely to be ultimately published in Glamor Magazine. Papers are selected on the basis of discipline, novelty, and general significance, in addition to the usual criteria for publication in specialized journals. Therefore, our decision is not a reflection of the quality of your research but rather of our stringent space limitations.

We wish you every success when you submit the paper elsewhere.

Sincerely,

Associate Editor, Glamor Magazine

This rejection, more so than most rejections in my life so far (love, job, scholarship, certain university admission applications etc)is particularly hurtful not only because it is one of the holy trinity of Glamour Mags in the vanity field of science but also because of the huge amounts of time, money, manpower, intellectual and physical efforts spent in generating, collecting and presenting the data and one which my advisor had high hopes on getting accepted.

You might then ask: Does it really matter where this manuscript is published? Why do I care so much?

This is the first reason. And the second: I have submitted my applications for tenure-track positions at two of the Ivy League schools.

There is always hope.


From Chemjobber.