Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Dealing with RejectionRejection is one of the more unpleasant aspects of the editorial and academic publications process.Receiving negative feedback on an article can be demoralising and upsetting, particularly for the early or mid-career academic whose career progression depends on securing publications, or for those who have spent a significant amount of time developing the ideas and gathering the data presented in the piece.I (Helen), in the not-too-distant past, spent a full year of research leave on a single article, only to have it rejected outright by my journal of choice!But, of course, rejection can be a positive and formative experience, presenting new opportunities for deeper reflection, reframing and improvement on well-intended, rigorous feedback.In other cases, authors may feel that a piece has been unfairly reviewed and that the rejection is unjustified.Either way, it's important to take the time carefully to consider and discuss the feedback with a critical friend, challenge it (if you feel strongly enough) with the editors, and move forward.Discern whether the rejection is due to a fundamental flaw or inaccuracies in your arguments or methods, or whether it's more a case of persuading the reader of the merits of your approach (this may be the case with a more experimental piece testing out new methods or theories, for instance).But rejection is not always about the quality of the work: a lot of the submissions we receive are simply out of the scope of our journal.As the International Journal of Children's Rights, our focus is firmly on children's rights internationally and we have a particular interest in international human rights frameworks such as, but not limited to, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.If we receive papers that are about issues that are connected to children's rights (such as child maltreatment, for example) but not explored through an explicit child rights lens, we will have no choice but to desk reject the paper with a suggestion that it is submitted to another journal.Unfortunately, we do this
Authors: Laura Lundy, Helen Stalford, Noam Peleg
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4382561257