The mounting pressure on scientists to publish has led to an ever-growing stream of submissions, allowing editorial offices, especially at high-impact journals, to become increasingly selective in their manuscript evaluation process. As a result, rejection rates at many highly competitive journals exceed 90%. Even acceptance by mid-range journals can be challenging, with typical rejection rates often in the range of 40–80%.

Maximising your chances of publication requires not only strong scientific content, but also clear and professional presentation. By presenting your results, ideas, and conclusions in clear, concise, and error-free language, you improve your chances of passing the pre-selection process described below and increase the potential impact of your published article among your peers.

At XpertScientific, our editors and team members are experienced academics with a proven publication record in their fields, many of whom have served as peer reviewers for leading journals. Some of our editors have also served on journal editorial boards, giving them valuable insight into the screening and evaluation of submitted manuscripts and allowing them to provide guidance on preparing your work for submission.

If you are looking for advice on how to improve your scientific writing skills, see our short guide on scientific writing.


The Pre-selection Process

Due to the sheer volume of submissions, no subject editor can read every manuscript in full, and most journals perform some form of pre-screening before a manuscript even reaches a subject editor. This pre-screening is often carried out by editorial assistants, who mainly assess the more superficial aspects of a manuscript. In other words, irrespective of the scientific merit of your work, there may be several purely formal reasons that prevent your manuscript from passing this first stage of the selection process:

  • Poor English
  • Poor journal targeting, i.e., the topic of your paper does not match the scope of the target journal
  • Sloppy or inconsistent manuscript formatting, including poorly prepared figures and tables
  • A poorly written or unconvincing cover letter
  • Failure to include the corresponding author’s address or contact details

Manuscripts rejected at this stage are often described as having been “desk rejected”, meaning that they are rejected by the journal before external peer review. All these issues can be remedied by using a professional scientific proofreading and editing service such as XpertScientific.

Technical Checks, Similarity Screening, and AI Disclosure

Before a manuscript is sent to a subject editor or external reviewers, many journals also perform technical and compliance checks. These may include checking whether the manuscript follows the journal’s author instructions, whether figures and tables meet the required format, whether references are complete and consistently formatted, whether ethics approval, consent statements, data availability statements, funding information, and conflict-of-interest declarations are included where required, and whether the manuscript passes plagiarism or similarity screening.

AI-assisted writing has added another layer to this process. AI tools can be useful for drafting, translating, or improving the readability of scientific text, but they can also introduce factual errors, unsupported claims, inappropriate terminology, fabricated references, or subtle changes in scientific meaning. Authors remain responsible for the accuracy, originality, and integrity of the submitted manuscript. In addition, many journals and publishers now require authors to disclose whether and how AI-assisted tools were used during manuscript preparation. AI tools should not be listed as authors because they cannot take responsibility for the submitted work.

If you have used AI to draft, translate, or substantially revise your manuscript, it is important to check the target journal’s AI policy before submission and to have the manuscript carefully reviewed by a human expert. For more information, see our pages on editing AI-assisted manuscripts and whether AI can replace human editors.

Scientific Screening

If your manuscript passes pre-selection, it will typically be handed to a subject editor, who will assess the scientific merit of your work. Again, you should bear in mind that, due to the sheer volume of submissions, a subject editor will not necessarily read every manuscript in full. If you fail to capture the editor’s interest by the time they have read your cover letter and abstract, they are unlikely to allow your manuscript to proceed any further.
Common reasons why manuscripts fail at this stage include:

  • Failure to convey the main scientific achievements in a compelling, concise, and well-formulated cover letter and abstract
  • Poor writing and lack of clarity throughout the manuscript
  • Derivative work with insufficient novelty
  • Incomplete, insufficiently described, or poorly documented data
  • Outdated or poorly described methodology
  • Limited general interest or relevance

The presence of just one of these flaws may prevent your manuscript from passing this stage. While our proofreading and editing service at XpertScientific cannot fix fundamental problems with the methodology or scientific content of your work, we can highlight potential problems and inconsistencies and improve the language and style of your manuscript to ensure that your work is presented in the best possible light, thereby improving your chances of passing this second stage.


Peer Review

Once your manuscript has passed these two selection stages, it will usually be sent out for peer review, often to two or more experts in your field. This process is designed to provide quality control and ensure that only articles of sufficient scientific merit and general interest are accepted for publication. To avoid conflicts of interest, reviews are often single-blind (the reviewers know the authors’ identity, but the authors do not know the reviewers’ identity) or double-blind (neither the authors nor the reviewers know each other’s identity).
The reviewers provide written reports on the scientific merits and potential problems associated with your work, and your manuscript will usually be classified as follows:

  1. Publish as is: this is the rare "best case" outcome in peer review. The reviewer is convinced by the scientific merit of your work and finds no significant shortcomings in the science, presentation, or format.
  2. Accept for publication after minor revisions: in this case, you have convinced the reviewer of the value of your work, but some minor corrections are required before publication.
  3. Consider for publication after major revisions: in this case, the reviewers recognise the scientific merit of your work, but substantial corrections, additional analyses, or even re-analysis of your data may be required before the manuscript can be reconsidered for publication.
  4. Reject: if your manuscript lacks the necessary scientific merit, reviewers may recommend rejection, either outright or with the possibility of resubmission once more substantial problems have been addressed.

Editorial Decision

Depending on the reviewers’ recommendations, the quality of your revisions, and your replies to the reviewers’ comments, the editor may decide to send your manuscript for a second round of review or use their discretion to accept your manuscript in its original or revised form.

If the reviewers reach very different conclusions, the editor may also decide to send your manuscript to an additional reviewer to obtain a third opinion.

Always bear in mind that reviewers’ recommendations are exactly that: recommendations. It is therefore not uncommon for an editor to decide not to publish an article despite positive reviews, or to recommend publication in a sister journal instead. Especially at high-impact journals, decisions at this level are often influenced by whether a topic is currently considered timely, broadly relevant, or of particular interest to the journal’s readership, and may not simply reflect the scientific quality of the work.

Summary

Although different journals have different policies and apply more or less stringent selection criteria, the general procedure is fairly similar and will typically prevent poorly formatted or poorly written manuscripts from even reaching the peer-review stage. This article provides a short summary of the selection stages that manuscripts typically undergo before publication and may help you avoid some of the more common pitfalls in manuscript preparation and formatting. To learn how to improve your scientific writing skills, see our short guide on scientific writing.