Presubmission enquiries - are they useful?
William Burns
Wednesday, 28 May 2008 04:11 UTC
I’ve heard people say it’s always best to put in a pre-submission enquiry before you submit a paper. Obviously it saves time – you don’t have to write the whole thing first, only to find the journal didn’t want it anyway.
And it also lets you organize your ideas a little more coherently before you set off on the adventure of writing the actual paper.
But does it increase your chances of acceptance? Will the journal’s editors take more notice of you if they already know your name from pre-submission emails (or phone calls)?
Any views on the value of presubmission enquiries?
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Replies
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Great question! I’m going to link to this at the Ask the Editor forum also.
From the Nature journal editors’ point of view: we allow presubs because authors want to send us them, but the editors always prefer to read the whole paper than a presubmission enquiry. An editor (or anyone) cannot tell what is in a paper without reading it in full. Even though we have format requirements for presubmission enquiries (mainly that the first paragraph is in journal style so that the actual result and conclusions are clear, and crucially that the “presub” (as we call it) is fully referenced so the editor can tell exactly what is new), presubs tend to be hype – certainly compared with full papers.
The editors would prefer to read the full paper even if it isn’t in journal format, than to read a presub.
When an editor reads the presub, she/he has two options: A “sounds interesing, let’s see the whole paper” and B “no, not for us”. In A, the whole paper is often unsuitable, because the presub may have been a good advertisement for an insubstantial or insufficiently novel piece of work. The author is then furious to be rejected, and appeals on grounds of the presub having been found interesting – ultimately, bad feelings all round. In B, the author is upset at having the presub turned down, and may in any case send in the whole manuscript – net result, time used for no good end.
I agree that the presub is a very useful tool for the author in allowing him or her to focus his or her argument, but it does not need to be actually submitted to the journal. At Nature we encourage the author to provide two summary paragraphs in the cover letter, one for scientist readers and one to explain the work to the general public. The editors don’t use these paragraphs, they are mainly requested to help the author to judge whether his/her paper really does have a Nature message (as we reject so many papers without review, it is a way to help the author save time). But as far as judging a paper for publication is concerned, an editor would always prefer to read the whole paper, in my experience of “handling editors” (and I have been one myself).
In some fields, the presub is a way of life, and authors send them to several journals simultaneously, then vigorously chase the journals for decisions, saying “journal x will take it if you don’t decide” etc. Again, this can only force the editor to a hasty decision, that may well be revised when the full ms is submitted.
Personally I do not think it makes the least difference to your chances if the editor “knows” you via phone calls and emails.
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Very interesting reply, Maxine.
I thought it was interesting what you said about authors appealing the rejection on the basis that the journal liked the pre-sub letter.
I can’t imagine ever doing this myself. As an occasional writer of papers, I just assume either the final paper didn’t live up to the proposal, or the journal editor changed his or her mind, and take it on the chin. I don’t think all my ideas are great, so it’s just a learning experience that allows me to sharpen my game (I hope!) next time around.
I suspect I’m a bit more laid back about this than some because with my journalist’s hat on I’ve sent tens, if not hundreds, of proposals to various magazines, and either not recieved a reply, or a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” type response four months later. From this perspective it seems rather miraculous that scientific journals are prepared to wade through a pre-submission and actually get back to the author in a reasonable time.
But I take your point about not even sending a pre-sub to the journal, and simply using it as a space for working the story out.
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The number of appeals against editors’ decisions is high, at every stage of the process. It is a massive time-sink for all concerned. Of course I can understand why the author(s) of a particular paper want to appeal. But multiply that up to appealing a presub, a rejection “not sent to peer-review”, a rejection with peer-reviewers’ comments, etc, with the number of submissions received by Nature (in 2007 we published about 7 per cent of papers submitted), you begin to see the scale of the problem.
We make it clear in the guide to authors that we do not consider appeals or engage in further communication about presubs once an editor has sent a decision, but that does not stop people. -
Thanks Maxine for taking the time to reply to my question.
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