Hey all! recently heard back from a journal that a paper I'd written had not acceptable for publication in its present form. However, if you feel that you can suitably address the reviewers' comments (included below), I invite you to revise and resubmit your manuscript. and i hace received the reports for both reviews, the first have gived a positif feeedback and have mentionned that the paper is suitable to the journal, and the quality of this paper is marginal above the level of acceptance for publication and gived me a very specific question on the proposed mathematical model. The second have gived a very negative evaluation of the paper exactly the opposite of the other review, but also with stupids questions that show he has not read the paper or it is not his area of ​​research.

I need you to answer me on these two questions:

1- I do not understand exactly the term : not acceptable for publication in its present form?. (Accepted under Revision or i need to improve the paper to be accepted under revesion or what?) beacuse my supervisor as second author said that the paper it is still not accepted, it is to review before the publisher can make a final decision.

2- the report of the second review (automatic report generated by the website tools of the journal) does not contain any relevants questions just his opinion on the paper and He only mentioned negative things and nothing of specific. I do not know what to reply him in my report?

Help please.

thanks.

Hi Ninoum,

I also received "not acceptable for publication in its present form" reply from the journal editor when I submitted my Masters research for journal publications last time. It does not mean that your paper is rejected for the time being, but you need to make revisions according to the reviewers comments and send the revised paper,. They will then review the revised paper and made the final decision based on it.
About the second reviewer's comments, as far as I know you can email the journal editor back to ask him to clarify the things that you don't understand or you can provide rebuttal points to the comments explaining why his negative comments are wrong/ not accurate.

Hey Ninoum. Basically your paper has been given a 'revise and resubmit' verdict, meaning that it hasn't been accepted or rejected. You have been given the chance to make revisions, but the journal is not obliged to accept the paper even after you've revised it. If you send it back revised, either the editor will make the decision whether to accept or reject it, or it may go back to the reviewers again for their comments. I wouldn't feel too disheartened though- I had 'revise and resubmit' verdicts on all of my first four papers, and after revisions they were all accepted. Two were accepted straight away on resubmission by the editor, and the other two went back to the original reviewers for another opinion. I had to make additional revisions to one of the four papers after resubmission.

I also received reviews with irrelevant comments on that reflected a lack of knowledge of the area on the reviewers' part. I even received requests to include literature that is non-existent! I just made all of the changes that seemed reasonable and in my letter to the editor at resubmission I included the reasons why I had not been able to make some of the changes, felt that they were not appropriate/necessary, or that I didn't understand the feedback. As long as you have good reasons for not making a change, you'll be fine.

Good luck- persevere with it and most likely it'll be accepted! KB

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I'm there with my last ever paper based on my PhD data. In my case, the paper was a little too long and I wouldn't be surprised if I'm asked for further edits despite substantial removal of information.

It's a case of take the decision on the chin, look at the remarks, react accordingly and show you've carried out the changes they require.

Ironically, the very same journal asked me to review another paper at the same time. I don't know if will be held against me, however, the grammar and graphics were in parts so poor I had to reject it. Feel rotten at the moment, but some of the paper was incomprehensible.

Having dealt with papers as an author and a reviewer, it's important you are clear and succinct (say what is to be said in as few words as possible), and the paper is well structured. Depending on Journal Guidelines (the below is typical for an Elsevier technical publication):

i.e.

Research Highlights
Abstract
Keywords
Introduction
Methodology
Results
Discussion
Brief Conclusions
Acknowledgements

The graphics should be clear and understandable from the off, and of publication standard with the original submission. Any unnecessary repitition of information should also be avoided.

Thank you very much for your answers:)