Recently I received this comment from an Elsevier editor &quot;The manuscript does not reach the required quality standard of this journal.&quot;. Since then have been found some answers but also raise additional questions. Like the one I making here. (You can browse the initial question following this link .) One of the criteria for acceptance of a paper is the one of written language throughout the text. Many times is found great published articles on more peripherical journals simply because the article does not comply strictly with the language minimum requirements for any other more reputable* Journals. Spite all the work is properly done, explained, and demonstrated both graphically and mathematically. In my particular case, my written English inherits some of my native language (PT) sentence constructs, which may be confusing to those with native English (UK and US) writing skills. That said, and thinking also in terms of open-data and open-source access to all, how can a researcher, in particular a junior (newbie) research, can learn the language requirements for a specific scientific Journal? EDIT: Yesterday I forgot to add an essential and relevant fact to this conversion, which is: many and many scientific researchers don't have the opportunity to develop their research works in a team or even do it collaboratively. They have to rely on themselves to present their findings and defend their thesis. And everyone here is acquainted with the syndrome of  &quot;tunnel effect&quot; when writing. So having someone, that can give a small contribution to unlocking someone else research writing, I see as a welcoming behavior that can only benefit the scientific community at the individual level. EDIT 2: in the midst of all these comments and answers, I found today, this small tutorial with some useful tips for non-native English researchers  EDIT 3: since the initial commit, I took the liberty and went requesting quotes online for proofreading and grammar. 400 CAD is quite a lot for a student, imho. It's not feasible.
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I just received the following comment from an Elsevier editor &quot;The manuscript does not reach the required quality standard of this journal.&quot;. To my mind say just that or nothing is pretty much the same considering the minimum requirements for data openness and transparency. there is already a good explanation of the submission process here:  However, as an automated process, is prone to flaws as well as to improvements. And does not explain in detail the received comment stated above. Any thoughts on deciphering the comment stated above are greatly appreciated. thank you EDIT: When I posted this question I forgot to add an essential and relevant fact to this conversion, which is: many and many scientific researchers don't have the opportunity to develop their research works in a team or even do it collaboratively. They have to rely on themselves to present their findings and defend their thesis. And everyone here is acquainted with the syndrome of  &quot;tunnel effect&quot; when writing. So having someone, that can give a small contribution to unlocking someone else research writing, I see as a welcoming behavior that can only benefit the scientific community at the individual level.
7846
I (an undergrad) and 2 other profs from my department have been working on something and we were thinking of submitting our work to a conference (a pretty well known one) this week. The fact is there is no related work that has been done on the problem we are solving and therefore there is no paper which we can cite as a starting point for our work. The only existing things that we make use of are trivial definitions from mathematics (like Riemann Integral) and also definitions that are pretty well known in my area (CS). So again, we do not think there is a need to cite any particular papers for that.   Now my question as stated was - is it acceptable to have a paper with no references? Or do you think we should just mention some papers (we never had to use them) where those definitions were actually proposed?  PS: I'm sure some of you might suggest me to ask those profs. But quite frankly none of them have much experience as far as publishing papers is concerned. So it would be great if some one could give me a good advice and help me out.   Edit: Thanks everyone for the answers. Of course somewhere a little sarcastic and ridiculing, but I can understand since this is a little weird. Actually yes, I had the notion that a paper wasn't worth citing unless I use some results from it (say an algo or some theorem). But I guess that isn't the only reason why I should be referencing as many seem to suggest here. The fact is we had seen quite a few survey papers before we started this out and I was under the impression that there wasn't a need to cite them since anyone could find them. But now, things are bit more clear and I guess I should cite them and I will :)
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The recent question  made me realize that I don't have any understanding of why one would upload to a preprint site.  (I don't work in a field where they seem to be common.)  Why would one be concerned about getting a manuscript on arXiv, if it's already under review with a journal?   Is it because of the long publishing timeline of journals?  (That could explain why computer science &mdash; which publishes much more in conferences &mdash; doesn't seem to do much with them.)
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Can someone give me a legitimate, convincing argument as to why scientific papers should be locked behind subscriptions and paywalls? That unless you happen to be on a campus, you can't get view a manuscript without paying an often extortionate amount?
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One of my friends submitted a paper to a reputable communications journal and received some reviews a week back. The paper was rejected, but the review comments were abysmal:    The language was so bad in one of them that it was difficult to understand what the reviewer was hinting at. Besides, the comments pertained to trivial things like naming of axes and there was no comment on (or understanding of) the overall work. The second of the three reviewers rejected the paper in one line saying it was impossible for him/her to understand what the paper aimed at. The third reviewer appreciated the paper and its results and made good suggestions for improving the results.   The editor-in-charge has rejected the paper since the vote was 2/3 in favour of that, but my friend feels hard done as he feels the two reviewers did not merit to review the work.   What recourse does an author have if his paper is rejected by a reputable journal, but the review comments indicate a serious lack of understanding of the paper's work? Should the author write his/her grievance to an editor higher in the hierarchy (an associate editor, for example)? Or is ditching the journal and submitting it to somewhere else the only solution?
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I am in the early stages of my PhD and I am trying to put together a literature review of my topic. My intention is that this review will eventually be included in my thesis, something like "the chapter that describes the state of the art in the domain."  My subject is soft matter physics and a large number of theses have already been written this topic. When looking at the literature reviews included in these other works I've noticed that:    The sequence of ideas is often the same (this makes sense, so why not?) Cited papers are always the same, even though 20 years elapsed between the first and last thesis. Moreover, papers from the 30's are cited but no one in my lab seems to have a copy available?    My hypothesis is that these theses are derived from some sort of a Mother of All Thesis, and that paraphrasing the work of the previous student is OK.   So, what makes a good literature review?  How do you notice that a literature review is sloppy?   PS: I posted this question because I assume many of you have experience with this process either in your own PhD work, or as a supervisor where you have had to deal with paraphrasing of your students.   PS2: I am not asking about making proper citations, LaTeX+BibTeX handles that like a charm.
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A professor of mine gave me a paper, because he wanted to show me the kind of work that we might do together in future. It is the advance access version of the paper, but I've found some errors, like typos, and wrong references of some figures in the text. Should I warn him about those things? If so, what would be the best way to do that?   Update   I'm from Italy, but I would love to know about other different cultures as well, especially USA; My professor is very open minded, nice and easy-going; Let's put it this way: if I was a computer I wouldn't understood the meaning of the figures because the references in the text don't match with the right plot, but since I'm human being I've understood that he meant the other figures.   I believe that pride is less important than the truth, especially when it comes to scientific publications. I mean, everyone can be wrong, there is nothing bad about it in my opinion. But I know that not anyone think the same, so I've asked this question because I wanted to know if it's worth to risk what @littleScala pointed out, to spread higher quality articles around the world and to show meticulousness in reading the paper.  Basically I thought:    Maybe a professor could be nicely impressed by such a level of attention; What if he find its own errors? He might think that I didn't read the paper with caution.
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Does anyone know a good online source for guidelines for shortening journal articles?  I've just finished a paper that I'm going to submit soon, but I think it is far too long.  Its current length is 30 journal pages.  (I know that because I've obsessively figured out what formatting would get me to have 1 word processed page for each journal page of a specific journal.)  This is in the humanities.  So I just want some good guidelines for things like "get rid of 'the fact that'."  The only such things that I found online were directed at people writing their college-admissions essay, which has to be very short, like 500 words.
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The two journals I am considering for my paper each demand that the paper be submitted exclusively to their journal for consideration.  What do I win if I don’t keep this rule?   If I get rejected by both, I will have found out earlier that the paper is not worthy of publication. If I get accepted by one of the journals, this is very good. I will have found out faster which of the two journals is willing to publish me. If I get accepted by both, this is really a dream. I should probably find a reason (excuse) to withdraw the publication from one of them.    In any case how can submitting to two journals negatively impact my reputation more than the gain by being actually accepted? (More so considering I will probably leave academia after my PhD dissertation.)  What can I lose if I don’t adhere to this rule? What sanctions, if any, can I expect?
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We have witnessed (heard or read) about the birth of new academic journals many times. I have a vague idea how that happens:   A scientist or a group of scientists recognize the need for an academic journal in a specific field or a new scientific society considers to publish a journal,  they choose a group of experts as founders and/or chief editors,  they determine a scope and some basic rules for the journal,  they decide about the number of issues in each year and similar things,  they find a publisher or decide to publish the journal entirely on web, they establish a web site for the journal,  and then they announce the new journal in the related scientific community.    Did I miss any stage? But I suspect there are lots of discussions, negotiations, arrangements and cooperations behind the curtain, which public (the rest of the related scientific community) doesn't know. So my questions are:   What is a typical procedure for establishing a respectful academic journal?  Do financial considerations play a key role?  Should the founders be top experts (to some degree) in the field?  Is it important the new journal be affiliated to a scientific society or be published by a recognized publisher?  Why are some new journals published only on-line?   What are the influential factors for the success of a new journal?  How do the founders choose the editors?  What else should one consider for initiating a new academic journal?   Please share your partial answers too if you don't have all the answers.  Disclaimer: I am just curious and I don't intend to initiate any new journals in the near future.;)
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Some commercial services sell certificates to manuscript authors.  Frequently these certificates are marketed to authors in developing countries where English is not widely spoken.  These services claim that the certificate indicates that the manuscript meets a certain standard of quality.  Often the certificate states that the manuscript is written in correct English.  The certificate may be accompanied by editing services.  Should I pay for a certificate and send the certificate to a journal?  This is a general question is inspired by  to avoid talking about a specific service.
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This may be a question repeated many times, but I want to know your opinion.   I submitted a journal paper for an algorithm (Computer Science). Fearing that the review process take too long, I decided to submit a short-version conference paper, while the long version is under-review. I received the journal review comments, and re-sent the modifications to the journal. Meanwhile, the conference paper was accepted. But the camera-ready is not sent yet.   The problem is that both papers are about the same idea. There is also some copy-pasted parts in both papers. But:  1) the editor of the journal was not informed about the conference paper (I heard that I should tell the journal about any published papers - but note that the conference paper is not yet published - not even the camera ready is submitted),   2) the organization organizing the conference, is not the same that manage the journal. I have been told that there are conflicting copyrights.   The proposed solutions (that colleagues told me about):   a) submit both as is !   b) submit both (but with change in text).   c) do not submit the conference paper (but I heard this can be harmful)  d) tell the editor now (but honestly, the journal is way more important than the conference).
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Is there a non written rule to which person to use in the PhD thesis, 5 years of using "We" in the papers have brought me to the innate necessity to do it every time I describe something.  Recently, though, one of my lab-mates told me that I should use I, since it is your work, if the thesis were co-written, then it would be a different story.  Is there any standard in your universities, or do you have any preferred practice.
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I submitted my paper in IEEE Transcations of XXX and got a rejection. But the comments were really helpful and has helped me a lot in improving the paper. But, unfortunately, I cannot resubmit that paper to this same journal again and now I am looking for another journal.   I am writing a proper response again every comment and thinking to submit the response letter as part of the submission to the new journal. The basic idea is to let the reviewers know that this paper has been reviewed (by reviewers of another journal) and improvements has been made. Will it somehow improve the chances of acceptance. (as I am in the final stages of my PhD now)  What does the community say?
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Last year, I applied to a university which is in Europe so a research statement is a crucial part of the application. I was interviewed by two faculty members and then finally got a rejection letter.    In my research statement, I had a particular idea and described a roadmap for it, though I did not get into technical details. But the idea was there and clearly stated. Recently, I came across a publication where the title is the same as my idea (wording is a little bit different) and is co-authored by one of the members of the interview panel.  The publication has technical details which were not part of my research statement. I believe there is no clear proof here whether my ideas got used or not.    My questions are:   Is this suspicious?   Is this valid and acceptable?
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I recently came across several papers in the area of Information Extraction and Data Mining which seem to have passed the review process even if they (1) use some new terminology without describing it, (2) replicate some old and popular technique and just describe it in a new way, (3) use new datasets without releasing them publicly or describing them in detail, (4) confusing language that doesn't seem to describe the methods... and much more.   Why challenge them? Such papers give these people a kind of leverage in situations where number of publications count rather than quality of genuine work. They also encourage, let's say, 'pseudoscience' within the scientific community - or fraud, as those more experienced among you say.  I've faced situations like:-   Someone hired me from a freelance site to implement a previously published paper. The paper doesn't adequately describe the novel methods they claim. I spend a week on it but don't get paid.  Similar situation but the implementation's accuracy doesn't match the claim. In a semi-academic gathering (tea time in a summer school), a discussion turned into a debate. Though I wasn't involved in it, one of the others said something which I pointed out as being logically wrong. It turned personal and one of them claimed that they knew better because of having twice the number of papers than me. Later when I read their papers I found that they didn't contain any ideas that would count as a genuine research.    I guess some of you might have been in similar situations before. Yes it doesn't matter in the longer term; but it is hard to avoid some situations like this and I think it might be hampering the research community as a whole.   Here are the exact points of my question:   Should we confront such publications? Would we get anything out of it?  Is it even feasible?   How can I do so? What actions are possible in such cases? What is the best course of action?   p.s. Yes citations matter more than just throwing papers - but such publications also get citations from other equally content-less papers published in similar conferences.   pps. Most of these papers are from less-than-tier-3 level conferences but still published by top publishers like IEEE and Springer.
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Point 1: At my university, it's a practice (not compulsory) to submit our conference/journal paper first to a department where it is checked for plagiarism and quality. Then it's sent to professors in the university to confirm that they don't have any authorship problems with it (ie: that the student didn't copy one of their ideas, unacknowledged). It's only then that the student gets approval to send the paper to a conference (specifically ) or journal.    Point 2: A journal or conference has it's long procedure of reviews and only some papers get accepted. If rejected or un-published, the author can send it to another conference or journal and there's a similar lapse of time.    During both above situations, isn't it possible for someone else to  the idea? Does the academic community have any provisions to prevent a planned scooping? ie: Someone reviewing the paper purposely rejects it and during the time that elapses, publishes the same idea or allows one of his/her other students to publish the idea.    A teacher of mine says that it's because of these fears that she directly submits papers to conferences without going through the university's process. Also, the same reason she submits to conferences instead of journals, because the journal review process is much longer, increasing the scope of the idea being scooped.    So are there any safeguards? If I see my idea scooped somewhere, would it help if I can show proof that I had already submitted the idea at a conference and the paper was rejected? Will the person who supposedly scooped it, get blacklisted?