Feeling frustrated, down, and not sure where to turn. (Social Sciences, Qual).

I'm 6 months post-graduation from my PhD, and while my job prospects have been very good, I cannot seem to get anything published.

I've had three papers under review this year (a fourth just sent out, and a series of single and multi-authored in the works). One of those three was an outright rejection, that's fine. The second, was an R&R. The third, minor revisions.

I take revisions seriously, and with the R&R I did everything the reviewers asked, even returning to the original data set, and had the paper reviewed by one of my former supervisors before submission. However, despite this, the article was ultimately rejected on second review, even though a number of the new issues brought up can be fixed. The comments themselves are quite helpful and positive for further review, but the final decision was a rejection.

My minor revisions is now under review, and I'm terrified it'll just get rejected like everything else. This R&R paper that's now a reject, I don't know what to do with. Make the further changes and submit somewhere else? Leave as is and submit somewhere else? Give up on it?

Then this leaves me thinking, surely, if I can't get anything published, I shouldn't be in a research career?

Has anyone else had a series of rejections?

really sorry to hear...

i would give up on the r&r paper. that is 'for now'. maybe to go back at it at some other time.
you still have stuff in the pipeline and it's good to just continue working on things, fire away, something will stick in the end. aim low, conference publications, sure they might not be worth as much as a journal, but it's still something to show for, especially in the earlier stages of a career. employ nepotism, if you can.
publishing is difficult, there can be a lot of dodgy stuff going on during reviewprocesses you don't know about, there's politics, and some people might not have a clue what they're reviewing, all kinds of things. in the best of cases you get an ok reviewer knowing what you're talking about and giving you constructive feedback. it shouldn't be like that, but it often is, unfortunately.

don't ever let the rejections define your worth. it's not about you.

i myself had mixed experiences, some stuff accepted, others rejected and i've been told to let the rejected stuff go and go back to the ideas at a later stage and maybe incorporate them in some other paper. it's also good to let it go for psychological reasons, much more frustrating to always go over the same rejected paper than to just say: ok that's it, i try something else.

good luck.

It's probably different in social sciences, but in sciences if a paper is rejected we just submit somewhere else, usually a lower ranking journal.

I would make the changes and resubmit elsewhere if it was me.

It's exactly the same in the social sciences in this case. Just that the rejection on a single-authored article stings even more as you haven't got others to commiserate with!
Awsoci, give it a fortnight, then go back to the new reviews. A bit of distance will help you make a better decision on whether what they suggest will make it a better article. If they will, make the changes and submit elsewhere, if not submit as it is (obviously respecting the new journal's requirements). The major social science journals have really low acceptance rates, and it might be that you were just aiming a bit too high with the two papers. I'd definitely persevere with the two papers, and send them to at least one other journal before giving up on them (I think you'd be surprised how many rejections big names get), as I presume this is part of your PhD data and you do need peer-reviewed publications out of it.

I would definitely try other journals with it. One thing I read recently was to make sure that your keywords flag up that it's qualitative research (to maximise the chance of it going to reviewers who know enough about your methodology) - a few people I know have had an awful time getting qualitative work through, and one was advised to go away and re-do her research as a quants study! Good luck and I think this is much more common than you're imagining just now.

Hi everyone,

Thank you for your responses. I had a chat with a few different colleagues and had a close look at the reviews. The required changes are actually not difficult or bad (basic things like develop the methodology a bit more, weave in a discussions of detraditionalisation, etc) but I've been told that this particular journal only allows for 1 R&R, if further revisions are needed (even if minor), it gets rejected. It is a high impact journal, so I will work down the list. According to my supervisor, he had an article rejected because it didn't cite any articles from that journal!

I think the thing that hurt the most, is that the reviews state that the piece offers original and insightful findings, so that's a plus. I'll keep working on it, and get some fresh eyes to help.

:)

My current boss keeps telling me to follow the path of least resistance. If you're sending the paper to a new journal, and were happy with the previous version (e.g., the version after the R & R) then just send it as it is to a new journal (with a few tweaks if the remit of the journal is slightly different). You could spend a long time making those changes and then the next lot of reviewers could come up with a whole load of different comments.

I've only shelved one paper. This was after it had been rejected by three (or possibly four) journals and the comments they were coming out with were things I couldn't really change (sample size being one of them).