Flipping a manuscript

So you’ve decided to flip your rejected manuscript. How do you decide where to send it?

A colleague of yours has a friend who simply goes to the sorted list of journals by impact factors and systematically heads down the list! I suppose he starts at Science or Nature, heads through Cell, proceeds through Neuron….and perhaps eventually ends up at the Journal of Neurochemistry.

While systematic, the above approach is slow and probably not optimal for most junior investigators.

I think a wiser approach is to look very carefully for clues from the referees. Often they’ll suggest where they think the manuscript would be more appropriate. Many times, this advise is excellent. Particularly if the referee seemed to be positively disposed towards the science itself.

It’s also a good idea to look at where the articles you are citing are published–especially your most important citations. I’d add a component to that algorithm: make certain that the putative target journal is in fact more specialized in its scope than the journal you submitted to earlier.

So for example, you probably wouldn’t be wise to, having first submitted to Neuron and been rejected, now try Science. Although it’s possible you might succeed….I’ve seen stranger things happen.

Next post we’ll talk about PNAS and the various urban legends concerning its publication policies.

Jim