{"title":"The Rocky Road to Rejection Resilience: A Personal Publishing Journey.","authors":"Lynette Jean van der Merwe, Gina Joubert","doi":"10.5334/pme.1727","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>The journey through submission, rejection, and eventual publication of scholarly work is challenging to academic researchers' resilience. Dealing with rejection without succumbing to burnout or impostor syndrome requires a growth mindset. This paper analyses one author's manuscript rejections over five years and makes recommendations for academic researchers regarding manuscript rejections.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>This retrospective longitudinal mixed-methods study included one author's rejected submissions from 2019 to 2023. Quantitative data on manuscript rejection characteristics: number of rejections, subsequent publication, submission (field and research type), journal location and impact factor, and nature of rejection (desk rejection, rejection after review or revision) were analysed descriptively. Qualitative data (narrative text indicating reasons for desk rejection) were analysed thematically. Ethics approval was obtained.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Eighty submissions of 47 manuscripts were rejected, including 65% desk rejections. Most manuscripts were rejected once (60%) or twice (26%), and 77% were subsequently published. Most submissions were to journals in Africa (56%), on postgraduate student research (63%), in the field of medicine (71%). Themes related to reasons for desk rejection included not meeting journal requirements (scope, focus, criteria or priority), manuscript inadequacy (novelty, relevance, methodology, or contribution), and ethical issues (similarity indices, or ethics documentation).</p><p><strong>Discussion: </strong>This study on manuscript rejections received by one author over five years revealed that most rejected manuscripts were subsequently published. Desk rejection was most common. We support literature on normalizing and destigmatizing rejection and bolstering resilience to support academic researchers when dealing with technical, manuscript-related revisions and inevitable emotional responses to rejection to ensure healthy longevity in their scholarly careers.</p>","PeriodicalId":48532,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Medical Education","volume":"14 1","pages":"560-569"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9000,"publicationDate":"2025-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12428350/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Perspectives on Medical Education","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5334/pme.1727","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2025/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"EDUCATION, SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Introduction: The journey through submission, rejection, and eventual publication of scholarly work is challenging to academic researchers' resilience. Dealing with rejection without succumbing to burnout or impostor syndrome requires a growth mindset. This paper analyses one author's manuscript rejections over five years and makes recommendations for academic researchers regarding manuscript rejections.
Methods: This retrospective longitudinal mixed-methods study included one author's rejected submissions from 2019 to 2023. Quantitative data on manuscript rejection characteristics: number of rejections, subsequent publication, submission (field and research type), journal location and impact factor, and nature of rejection (desk rejection, rejection after review or revision) were analysed descriptively. Qualitative data (narrative text indicating reasons for desk rejection) were analysed thematically. Ethics approval was obtained.
Results: Eighty submissions of 47 manuscripts were rejected, including 65% desk rejections. Most manuscripts were rejected once (60%) or twice (26%), and 77% were subsequently published. Most submissions were to journals in Africa (56%), on postgraduate student research (63%), in the field of medicine (71%). Themes related to reasons for desk rejection included not meeting journal requirements (scope, focus, criteria or priority), manuscript inadequacy (novelty, relevance, methodology, or contribution), and ethical issues (similarity indices, or ethics documentation).
Discussion: This study on manuscript rejections received by one author over five years revealed that most rejected manuscripts were subsequently published. Desk rejection was most common. We support literature on normalizing and destigmatizing rejection and bolstering resilience to support academic researchers when dealing with technical, manuscript-related revisions and inevitable emotional responses to rejection to ensure healthy longevity in their scholarly careers.
期刊介绍:
Perspectives on Medical Education mission is support and enrich collaborative scholarship between education researchers and clinical educators, and to advance new knowledge regarding clinical education practices.
Official journal of the The Netherlands Association of Medical Education (NVMO).
Perspectives on Medical Education is a non-profit Open Access journal with no charges for authors to submit or publish an article, and the full text of all articles is freely available immediately upon publication, thanks to the sponsorship of The Netherlands Association for Medical Education.
Perspectives on Medical Education is highly visible thanks to its unrestricted online access policy.
Perspectives on Medical Education positions itself at the dynamic intersection of educational research and clinical education. While other journals in the health professional education domain orient predominantly to education researchers or to clinical educators, Perspectives positions itself at the collaborative interface between these perspectives. This unique positioning reflects the journal’s mission to support and enrich collaborative scholarship between education researchers and clinical educators, and to advance new knowledge regarding clinical education practices. Reflecting this mission, the journal both welcomes original research papers arising from scholarly collaborations among clinicians, teachers and researchers and papers providing resources to develop the community’s ability to conduct such collaborative research. The journal’s audience includes researchers and practitioners: researchers who wish to explore challenging questions of health professions education and clinical teachers who wish to both advance their practice and envision for themselves a collaborative role in scholarly educational innovation. This audience of researchers, clinicians and educators is both international and interdisciplinary.
The journal has a long history. In 1982, the journal was founded by the Dutch Association for Medical Education, as a Dutch language journal (Netherlands Journal of Medical Education). As a Dutch journal it fuelled educational research and innovation in the Netherlands. It is one of the factors for the Dutch success in medical education. In 2012, it widened its scope, transforming into an international English language journal. The journal swiftly became international in all aspects: the readers, authors, reviewers and editorial board members.
The editorial board members represent the different parental disciplines in the field of medical education, e.g. clinicians, social scientists, biomedical scientists, statisticians and linguists. Several of them are leading scholars. Three of the editors are in the top ten of most cited authors in the medical education field. Two editors were awarded the Karolinska Institute Prize for Research. Presently, Erik Driessen leads the journal as Editor in Chief.
Perspectives on Medical Education is highly visible thanks to its unrestricted online access policy. It is sponsored by theThe Netherlands Association of Medical Education and offers free manuscript submission.
Perspectives on Medical Education positions itself at the dynamic intersection of educational research and clinical education. While other journals in the health professional education domain orient predominantly to education researchers or to clinical educators, Perspectives positions itself at the collaborative interface between these perspectives. This unique positioning reflects the journal’s mission to support and enrich collaborative scholarship between education researchers and clinical educators, and to advance new knowledge regarding clinical education practices. Reflecting this mission, the journal both welcomes original research papers arising from scholarly collaborations among clinicians, teachers and researchers and papers providing resources to develop the community’s ability to conduct such collaborative research. The journal’s audience includes researchers and practitioners: researchers who wish to explore challenging questions of health professions education and clinical teachers who wish to both advance their practice and envision for themselves a collaborative role in scholarly educational innovation. This audience of researchers, clinicians and educators is both international and interdisciplinary.
The journal has a long history. In 1982, the journal was founded by the Dutch Association for Medical Education, as a Dutch language journal (Netherlands Journal of Medical Education). As a Dutch journal it fuelled educational research and innovation in the Netherlands. It is one of the factors for the Dutch success in medical education. In 2012, it widened its scope, transforming into an international English language journal. The journal swiftly became international in all aspects: the readers, authors, reviewers and editorial board members.
The editorial board members represent the different parental disciplines in the field of medical education, e.g. clinicians, social scientists, biomedical scientists, statisticians and linguists. Several of them are leading scholars. Three of the editors are in the top ten of most cited authors in the medical education field. Two editors were awarded the Karolinska Institute Prize for Research. Presently, Erik Driessen leads the journal as Editor in Chief.
Perspectives on Medical Education is highly visible thanks to its unrestricted online access policy. It is sponsored by theThe Netherlands Association of Medical Education and offers free manuscript submission.