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Increasing the Potential that a Manuscript is Accepted to a Prestigious Journal

There are politics to getting a manuscript accepted at a prestigious journal. We’d all like to think that the merits or quality of the article is the only consideration, but it is often not that straight forward. The politics of publication mean that if you are not a regular reader of a journal, some homework is required after you’ve finished the research but before you begin to write the manuscript. The homework involves becoming familiar with the aims and content of the journal and with its editor. 

I wish I could say that over the course of 38-year career as an academic, I was always sensitive to the politics of publication. About ten years ago, a journal editor rejected a manuscript I submitted despite three largely positive reviews. I couldn’t fathom the reason at the time. I look back now and see that I probably offended the editor by not acknowledging his work adequately in the manuscript. To top off my cultural missteps, I didn’t realize that for that journal a “reject” did not rule out submitting a revision. 

The Aims Statement

The aims statement of a journal is like the mission statement of a college or university. A lot of care and attention has gone in to alerting the reader to the type of manuscripts a journal accepts. The aims statement will usually specify what type of research methods it prioritizes (qualitative, quantitative, and/ or mixed methods). It will describe the audience.  

You are wasting your time and the time of the editor if you submit a manuscript to a journal without carefully studying the aims statement.

Learn Something About the Journal Editor

The politics of publication includes learning something about the journal editor and his or her viewpoints by, for example, checking out their website, university page, or Wikipedia page. I edit a journal that publishes about research methods. Here’s a link to my Wikipedia page which can supply some ideas about the types of articles that interest me as an editor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_G._Creamer

Journal editors select reviewers and make the final decision on a manuscript. They are usually the first screen to judge if your manuscript meets the AIMS of the journal or if it is “out of scope.” They are the one who will arbitrate if reviewers have widely different views about the quality of a manuscript. You have not read the aims statement carefully if you get a quick response to a submission as “out of scope.”

Long-serving editors play an outsize role as gate keepers for what gets published and what doesn’t. They have opinions, sometimes expressed firmly through regular editorials. Sensitivity to publication politics suggest that you read some these editorials or browse some of their publications to get a sense of their standpoint. You will find yourself swimming up-stream if you have widely different viewpoint about a topic.  

What There is to Learn from Editorials

Editors of many journals publish editorials regularly. They offer insight about hot topics of the day as well as what topics to avoid. Sometimes an editor feels so strongly about a topic that it is as if the whole editorial is written in capital letters. In the Journal of Mixed Methods Research, for example, one editorial was an admonition to avoid introducing new terminology.

There is one journal that publishes in my domain that I avoid because the editor has written editorials about mixed methods research that makes it clear that his/her stance is starkly different then my own. 

Search the Journal for Articles on Topics Related to Yours

Publication politics extends to searching the journal for articles on topics related to yours. This makes it possible to pinpoint the contribution your article will make within a context familiar to those who read that journal. These are the articles likely to be familiar to the reviewers. Political savvy extends to being sure your reference list includes multiple entries from the targeted journal.  It is strategic to check out some of what the editor has written if he/she has expertise in your content area.

Send a Query Letter to the Editor

After you have done research about the journal, the editor, and the types of articles it publishes, many editors will respond quite candidly to a brief query letter that provides a summary of the article. 

From My Experience as an Editor
I am about to wrap up a term as one of the editors in chief of an international journal. I have never considered rejecting a manuscript that doesn’t reference my work, even when I have written on closely aligned topics.

But I have been willing to invest a considerable amount of time in helping a newcomer to the publication process with a promising manuscript that has found my work helpful to navigate the multiple rounds of revision often required before publication.