Tuesday, 19 June 2018

publications - My paper was too revolutionary - reviewers at a top journal rejected it "by simply reading the title". What now?



Some days earlier, in the hour of contemplation, I made an extremely critical and paradigm-shifting breakthrough in my field and then, I started writing on it for a publishing and many times checked through the paper and finally submitted it after many days of proofreading.



The paper was committed to the biggest and most popular journal for my field, and I waited for a reply. And the reply was saddening, my paper was mysteriously rejected. As I contacted the reviewer, I was told that he and others "rejected it by simply reading the title".


And my title was very professional, in the sense that it was not something like "X proven wrong and Y revolutionized!".


Now I am confused on what I should do, this paper needs to be published. If not for myself, then atleast for the thousands of other researchers who have hopelessly comitted their lives to this field.


I must add here, as my advisor congratulated me and hugged me on this great discovery, he was skeptical of my paper being published because it is simply too outstanding to be true. And big journals who receive thousands of paper each day will most likely reject it in quickness, and this paper needs to be read with a lot of thought and concentration to be believed. He advised that I should submit it to a lesser known journal whose reviewers he is great friends with, so that he'll tell him to take a good thoughtful look at it. He assured me that my paper would be accepted there. However, I might have naively not considered this and simply went for the biggest journal out of extolment.


So what should I do now? And is rejecting a paper because it is too good even a valid reason?




No comments:

Post a Comment

evolution - Are there any multicellular forms of life which exist without consuming other forms of life in some manner?

The title is the question. If additional specificity is needed I will add clarification here. Are there any multicellular forms of life whic...