"I Just Got a Journal Rejection. Now Where Should I Send My Paper?"

I feel like I have said those exact words so many times to so many people. To all of my former advisors, colleagues, friends, random people at conferences, family members, neighbors, etc. who have helped me think through this, thank you. Today I guess I paid it forward (a bit) by having this exact conversation with a former graduate student of mine. I decided this deserves a blog entry. 

The good news is that there are people out there that have thought about this more carefully than I ever have (well, at least there is one person). Who, you ask? Her name is Tatyana Deryugina, and she gives excellent advice. I recommend that you read her blog regularly. 

Step 1: What to do after a rejection? The first thing to note is that rejection is part of the publication game. I will add that, unless you're always publishing in the very top journal(s), if you're not getting rejections, then you're not aiming high enough. 

My favorite piece of advice she gives: "It can be tempting to either (1) ignore the reports completely and send the paper back out as soon as possible or (2) treat the reports as a revise-and-resubmit and try to address all the reviewer’s comments. Neither approach is generally a good idea,.."  Read her blog for details on why, but she is exactly right. I have made both mistakes in the past. 

I will also add that when you first start a tenure track job, people will encourage you to send your paper to the very top journals. I think this is excellent advice in general, but as the tenure clock keeps ticking, be careful. You do not want to be in the position that because your paper spent too much time bouncing from top journal to top journal, you skip over the perfectly good top field journals simply because you have run out of time and need a publication right away. You also don't want to skip the appropriate journals just because you're emotionally exhausted from all of the rejections. Again, aim high! At least to start. But be aware of the risks. 

Step 2: Where should I send my paper next? Basically, the answer is to figure out where similar papers have been published recently and send it there. Click on the link for practical tips on how to systematically do this. 

Good luck!