How to Get Your Research Paper Published

1. Introduction: Hi there. Welcome to this course. My name is Andre. I'm a researcher in neuroscience and psychology and have conducted both empirical and theoretical research, some of which got published in high impact journals. And in this course, I want to show you how you can get your research published, too. Publishing research is how a researcher like you can make an impact on the world. Even the best research is worthless if nobody knows about it, and by publishing your research you can enable other people to read about it and get inspired by your research and use it to achieve the next breakthrough. However, to make sure that as many people as possible and also the right people will read your paper , you need to publish your paper in an attractive journal. And to make that happen, you will have to convince the editor that your paper is worthy off publication. For this, you need to understand what an editor expects and how the editor makes decisions even if you have a really good paper, just like a highly educated person will have a hard time to get a job without skills and searching and applying for jobs you will likely have a hard time to get your paper published. If you don't understand, the publication and selection process, especially high impact journals, get many strong submissions. And so knowing how to set yourself apart is vital. So after this course, you will be able to understand the publication process and how an editor thinks. No. Which strategy works best for each stage? Identify the right target journal for your paper. Create an intriguing cover letter to pass the desk review right. A compelling response letter to pass the peer review and many things more. All right, I'm excited to get started with you, and I see you in the course. 2. How to maximize the chance of publication: So how can you maximize your chances that you're paper will get published and, as a general rule there two goals that you want to achieve while your paper is being considered for publication? The first goal is that you want to arouse curiosity. You want to make the editor and reviewer one to read your entire paper and really pay a lot of attention to your paper. And the second goal is to convince your readers that you have made a substantial contribution to your research fields. And in almost all cases, the only way you can reach the second goal is by reaching the first goal 1st 1st you need to arouse the curiosity off your readers, and then you can convince them that you made a substantial contribution. So therefore, when you papers consider for publication at early stages at early steps, it makes sense to focus more on arousing curiosity. Why, later in the process, it makes more sense to focus on trying to convince them that you made a substantial contribution, and the reason why you need to start with curiosity is that inevitably, at the beginning, the editor and the reviewers will realize that the research has problems because every research has problems. So it's inevitable that at some point the editor will wonder. Is this paper really worthy of publication? And you can think of curiosity as almost a vaccination for these kinds of doubts, the more curious the editor is about your paper, the more likely the editor is to say, Well, let's just see where it goes, the more likely he or she is to give you the benefit of the doubt, and you will need that benefit of the doubt to actually get a chance to make the point that you made a substantial contribution to your fields. So the general strategy is to focus on curiosity at the beginning and then focus on convincing your readers that you made a substantial contribution as you get to later stages off the process. And in the next lecture, I will show you what exactly the steps are in this process. I see in the next election 3. The three stages of the publication process: Okay, so now that you have a general idea off the strategy, let's have a closer look at the publication process. The first face in the publication process is the desk review. The desk review is usually done purely by the editor of the Journal, and the editor decides, based on a rough first impression off your paper, whether he or she wants to consider your paper further for publication or not. And this usually happens within just a few days. And the reason why generals do that is because most of the time they get more submissions than they can seriously consider. So they have to do this initial selection off what they want to consider in detail and what they want to reject right away based on the first glance. So that's the first face desk review, and the next face is the peer review. So during a peer review, the editor is going to send out your paper to other researchers in your field and ask them for their opinion. So they're going to write a review for your paper, and then the editor makes a decision about your manuscript based on the recommendations coming from those researchers and the possible decisions the editor can make our except reject major revision and minor revisions. So let's go through them one by one. If the decision for your paper is a direct except than that's literally a miracle. Even if the Journal is very interested in your paper, they will very likely either ask for major revisions or minor revisions. Direct acceptance normally doesn't happen. A rejection, on the other hand, is a lot more common. Most of the papers that get submitted do get rejected in the end and therefore is good to be at least a little bit mentally prepared for that. Then the next possibility is a major revision, which basically means that they are not quite convinced of your paper. And they want you to do additional work such as, for example, conducting additional research to settle some open questions. And this can look very negative because he will get a lot of criticism. But it's actually a huge way. Actually, in many journals, especially very competitive journals, the major revision is probably the best thing you can hope for. And then the final possibility is the minor revision, which is basically the same but they're not gonna be as critical, and they're not gonna ask for big changes. If you're lucky, it may just be a few changes in writing, and then you're good to go. And if you get a minor revision than most of the time, you will just do what they ask for and your paper will get published. Okay, if you paper has been accepted or rejected, then this is where the process ends for you. But if the decision is major revision or minor revision, then you enter the last face, which is the revision face, and the name basically already says what it is. It just means that the editor makes a final decision about your manuscript based on your revision and most of the time, does this again done purely by the editor. Now, as I already said at the beginning off the process, it's more important to arouse curiosity, while in later stages of the process is more important to focus on convincing your readers that you made a substantial contribution and especially the desk review face is a faith that is almost purely about arousing curiosity. If you manage to make the editor curious about your research, then Very likely that editor is going to send out your paper for a peer review. Okay, so hopefully have a general perspective. Now off. How are we going to approach the publication process and maximize your chances? And I'm gonna show you in a lot more detail later. How exactly? You can approach this with an example of a cover letter with an example of a response letter and many more things. But first of all, we need to get some basic things out of the way. So in the next lecture, I will show you the steps that happen before you even think about submission. And then I will show you how to prepare everything appropriately to maximize your chances during the publication faces I see in the next lecture. 4. Is your paper good enough? (here is why the answer is YES): okay before we move deeper into the strategy and what exactly you need to do to maximize your chances of getting published. Let's talk for a moment about the question. Easier paper good enough for publication because that is a question people typically struggle with, especially when they try to publish for the first time. And I want to give you a very simple and very straight answer. If you got to the point where you have a paper, you should always submit your paper for publication. Every research paper has problems. Every research paper I ever submitted for publication had problems. Your research paper probably has problems, too, but that's okay, and that's normal, and you shouldn't let that hold you back. You should always submit your paper for publication. And even if your paper is not good enough yet, then you will learn what you need to improve to make it good enough from the feet back off the editor. And if you make it to the peer, review your face than also based on the feedback from your fellow researchers. So it is always a good idea to submit your paper for publication. All right, and then the next lecture. I'm gonna show you how you can pick a target journal for your paper. I see in the next lecture. 5. How to pick the right target journal: Okay, so you decided to submit your paper to a journal, and now the question is, which journal do you pick? And this is quite an important question because very often the success of a researcher is measured by the quality off journals that research has published it. So how do you pick a journal to submit to? And first of all, there will be two things that you will want a balance. On the one hand, what research has typically want is to publish in a high impact journal. On the other hand, when they try to publish in a high impact journal, that usually leads to a delay of publication. For one, it leads to a delay of publication because the publication process is more lengthy for high impact journals because they are often more critical. And it also leads to a delay of publication because the risk off a rejection is just much higher with a high impact journal. So, theoretically, if you don't care at all about the timing of your publication, then you should just go for the highest impact journal that you confined and just see what happens. And if they reject your paper you just move to the next best journal and the next best journal and the next best thing. But most of the time you will have some time frame in mind. And especially if you're reaching the end off your current contract and you want to get your paper published before that, then you probably should aim a little bit lower. Okay, so with that in mind, what are the aspect that you can look at when you compare different journals to each other and there three things that I recommend you look at? And the first thing is simply the impact factor of the journal. The impact factor is basically a number that expresses how often articles in this journal tend to be cited. And if articles in this journal are sergeant very often, then well, for one, it means that people really read articles in that journal, and even more than that, they actually build on the research in this article because otherwise they probably wouldn't site it. So, ideally, you want to publish in the journal that has the highest possible impact factor, and the next thing to look at is the reputation. What do researchers and you feel? Think about the Journal. What do you supervisors think? What do you call extinct? And sometimes you will find that even journals with a not terribly high impact factor actually have a very good reputation. Okay, And then, finally, it's important to look at the fits between your paper and the journal. So, first of all, does your research fit the goals off The Journal, for example, that journal could be about empirical research. It could be about theoretical research. It could be about review papers. It could be about a specific area of research and the better you paper fits thes general properties of the journal. The higher the chance that it will be published in that journal, then another thing to look at to assess the fit is also whether your paper fits the submission guidelines. And the most important aspect of the submission guidelines is the word limit. Some journals have a very strict and very narrow word limit, and then you need to ask yourself whether you can sell your research well within that word limit. And if you cannot, then you probably need to look for a journal that allows for more words or has no word limit at all. All right, so that's what I recommend you look at. Now, in the next lecture, I will walk you through a case study in which I will show you how you can get information about a journal and make the decision where you want to submit your paper. I see in the next lecture. 6. Case Study: How to pick a journal: all right. Now as to a case study together, and let's assume that you don't know any journal in your own field. And I'm going to use the field of social psychology as an example here because that's one of the fields I'm very familiar with. So I'm gonna type in social psycho psychology. Jewell and I'm gonna add ranking to hopefully get a good overview off the journals in the field going to search for that. And I'm just going to click on the first link. And here I have an overview off relevant journals that I may be able to publish him, and they are ordered here by a certain impact factor. So this is an example of an impact factor, and it's good to know that they're different kinds of impact factors. So it could be that you see the same journal on a different website with a different number of for the impact factor, and that's because they're several types of impact factors. And the consequence is that you shouldn't compare impact factors between different websites , at least not without being aware what impact factor they're using. So we're just going to stick to this website here, And what we can see here is that the highest ranking journal in social psychology is the Personality and Social Psychology Review Journal, and this Journal of based on the based on the name seems to be more interested in reviews. And let's say that we have done original empirical research. In that case, that journal is probably not a great fit. So let's move a little bit more down. Advances in experimental social psychology That is actually a book Siri's and I'm looking for journals here. So let's move one further. Then we have the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. This one has a very high impact factor in this field, and it sounds as if my research could fit into that journal because it's about social psychology. And, well, that's all I really see in the title. And let's say for this example that I'm relatively convinced off my research and that I don't have major time constraints, so half the time to go through revisions and other kinds of delays. So if I'm interested in that journal, then the next step is to have a look at that journal. So I'm just gonna personality and social psychology. I'm just gonna search for that journal. Here we go. And there it is. And here we are on the website off the journal. So one thing I want to point out right away is that here you see again an impact factor and is not the same number as we just saw. And that's because their several ways to calculate impact factors. So be sure that you look out for that. But what we're interested in right now is whether we are a good fit for that journalist. I'm just going to scroll down, and here we have some information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology publishes original papers in all areas of personality and social psychology and emphasizes empirical reports. But it may include specialized theoretical methodological and review papers, So it's a very broad journal, But the primary focus is on empirical reports, and that's exactly what I have. So that seems to be a good fit. Then, after I'm convinced that the fit between the journal and my research is good and it is good enough, I would next look at their submission guidelines so we'll click here, and the first thing I'm interested in. Is Citation standards divine? No. I'm interested in their word limit. I want to know whether my research that we have it word limits. I want to know whether my research fits into their word limits. Although papers should be written as succinctly as possible, there is no formal word limit on submissions. Well, that is great. That means that I don't even need to worry about the word limit. I just need to make it as succinct as possible. So based on what I just found, this could be my target journal. Next, I could ask people what they think about that journal, do that thing, that it's a good journal. And I know already that, Yes, people in the field of social psychology think that this is a pretty good journal. And let's say that I have no time constraints and that I'm confident enough to submit my research to that journal. Then that could be Monteiro Journal. All right, so that is how you pick a target journal for your submission. I see. In the next lecture 7. How to prepare your manuscript for submission: The next step is to prepare your manuscript for the submission, and he is an overview off things that are important to do. First of all, make sure that he have used spell checks for the final version off your manuscript. Also, make sure that your manuscript is in the right for months, as I showed you before. You can usually find on the website of the journal what former they require. So be sure that your manuscript is in the former that your Target Journal requires. Then also make sure that your manuscript is suitable for black and white printing, and there's something that people very often forgets. And this is usually most important for figures where you may have something that is color coded, and you want to make sure that these colors also work when they are in black and white. Another thing to check is whether your figures are in the right. Former. Very often journals require that you submit figures separately as separate files, and you want to make sure that they are in a file type that is accepted by the journal and also that their resolution is sufficient and resolution is the DP I dots per inch of your image and you want to make sure that the DP I is as high as required by the journal. And I will also show you in a minute what you can do if your figures do not have sufficient resolution. Okay, Another thing that you may want to do is to prepare your data and other materials for sharing. Once your research is published, people could ask you, for example, your data. Maybe they want to run a matter analysis on your data or something like that. And for that, it can make sense to prepare your data so that it's easily terrible. Okay? And then the final thing to do is to get approval for the final version of Hue manuscript from all authors. Okay. And in the next two lectures, I will show you how you can adjust the image resolution. So the DP I often image on windows and on a Mac I see in the next elections 8. How to adjust the resolution of figures (Windows): on Windows, you can find the resolution. So the DP I by right clicking on the file and then clicking on properties. And then once you've clicked on properties, you can go to the tap of details, and there you can find the horizontal and the vertical resolution, and you want to make sure that the numbers here are at least as high as required by the Journal. And very often the number required by the Journal will be 300 DP. I now suppose that UDP eyes are lower than that. Then what can you do? Here's a way how you can change the image resolution on Windows without any additional software. First, you just find a picture that has a DP I off 300 you can just do that by Googling 300 dp I image. Then you open that image in Microsoft paint. Then you also open the image that you want to change to 300 DP I in Microsoft pains. Then you click select all and copy the image that you want to change. Then you paste the image that you want to change into the Microsoft paned window off the 300 dp I image. And then what happens is that your image will be over laid over the old image and it will now have 300 DPR. So all you need to do now is say the new image, and that's how you check and change the image resolution on Windows. 9. How to adjust the resolution of figures (Mac): okay. And if you are in a Mac, then it's even easier to change the DP I So I have an image here, and all I do is I opened this image in preview. There we go. The neck click on tools. I click on a just size on Dhere is gonna tell me the dp I off this image pixels per inch. So he would concede that the DP I is 75 which is usually not enough for a journal. So all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna change that number 23 hundreds and I'm going to click on ok, and now I'm going to save this, and that's already it. Now the image is in 300 d p I All right, that's it with this lecture and I see you in the next one 10. How to write an intriguing cover letter (Desk review phase): Okay, now that the basic preparation is done, let's talk about the question. How you can get to the desk review and the most important tool to get through the desk review is the cover letter. Usually a submission starts with a short letter written by you to the editor in which you explain to the editor why you think that your paper will be a great paper for publication in the Journal. And the cover letter is the only thing for which it is relatively sure that the editor is gonna actually read it to make a decision in the desk review. The editor may not even look at your paper. May not even look at your abstract, or the editor may just take a quick glance at it. But the cover letter is something the editor will very likely read, and that will very heavily influenced the decision at the desk review stage. Okay, so knowing that how can you write an effective cover letter? And I've discussed already at the beginning that the desk review stage is definitely a face in which you want to focus more on arousing curiosity than about being absolutely compelling with your research. Nevertheless, it's also important to arouse curiosity in the right way, because if you overdo it with the curiosity part, if you basically over promise, then it's going to get very hard later to convince your readers. So the editors and the reviewers off the value of your research so you don't want to over promise and cost his appointments later down the road instead, what you want to do is you want to be honest, but select the right information and phrase it in a way that puts your research in the most positive light. Okay, with that in mind, how do you write the Carlette? So first of all, I would recommend that you keep the cover letter short during the desk review faced. The editor is not interested in lengthy information and said the editor wants to get as quickly as possible to the point where he or she either knows that your paper is going to go toothy review face or that is going to be rejected. And if your cover letter is too long, then you already frustrating the editor by the fact that you cannot quickly make a decision , so keep the cover letter short and a good guideline is 4 to 6 sentences. The next you cover that I should mainly focus on your research question and what you intend to contribute with your research. So, I added, intend to here between brackets because sometimes it makes sense to describe your findings , but only if they make your research more interesting. If your findings that actually a little bit disappointing, then I wouldn't mention them in the cover letter. Also don't mention details. Just focus on the general aspect, such as your research question and possibly general conclusions. And last but not least, never ever mentioned limitations of your research in your cover letter. Because your cover letter is supposed to arouse curiosity and limitations. Have no place in that. All right, let me give you an example to give you an idea what this could look like. Dear Professor Devin, please consider our manuscript titled Title for Publication in Journal. We investigated whether depression can be treated through a novel type of therapy that trains people to focus more on the positive. Previous research has shown that traditional therapies are not as effective as generally assumed. Moreover, Reason research suggested that depression may be caused by a learn focus on the negative. Our research can be seen as a test of this novel view on depression and may provide directions for future treatments and research. You're sincerely the authors, so let me point you to the most important aspects here. The first sentence is pretty standard, and you basically just wanna describe what you're submitting and to which journal. Then you want to say what your research question is and what your research was generally about. Then it's a good idea to say how that connects to existing research to make clear what the contribution is you're making with your research. And it's nice to end with a general sentence that gives a general idea off the contributions that you are making or trying to make with your research. So here that would be testing the novel view on depression and providing directions for future treatments and research. So that's an example how a cover that I can look like now. I also want to point out things that are not mentioned in this cover letter. Things that would not mentioned are, for example, that the treatment didn't work. The cover letter also didn't mention that the results were hard to interpret or that recently similar research was published, which makes our research a little bit redundant. So none of these limitations were mentioned. But nevertheless, the cover letter also didn't say anything that is in conflict with these things here. The cover letter didn't say that the treatment worked. The Coletta didn't say what the exact conclusion of the research. Waas and the cover letter also didn't say that It's the Onley research so far that has been conducted on this novel type of therapy, and that's what I mean by selecting information strategically and then phrasing it in the most positive way. You want to be honest while putting your research into the most positive lights. All right, that's his with his lecture, and I see in the next one 11. Submitting your paper: what you need to know: Once you're finished preparing everything, the next step is to submit. And for that you simply go back to the website off the journal to which you want to submit . So I used again the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology as an example here and then, usually somewhere on the website, you can find something like this manuscript submission. You click on that. And then somewhere here, you usually find a link where you can submit your paper and it can be a little bit hidden. And this is the one in my case. So all you need to do is click on that and then it will send you to, ah, log in page where you probably if you have never been there before, need to make a new account and then you can log in, and then the system will simply guide you through the submission process. So at this point, it gets relatively straightforward. You just need to follow the steps, and I just want to tell you about two more things that are worth paying attention to while you're submitting your paper. The first thing that I strongly recommend is that he used or kit orchid will provide you with an identify a number. And the point of this identify a number is to make sure that people can identify you unambiguously. So, for example, suppose that your name is John Doe and suppose that they have many researchers and you feel that have the name John Doe. Then it can get em big. Rhys, who has actually conducted which research and the orchid number is the solution for that problem. The orchid number. Make sure that people can unambiguously identify who has conducted the research. So all you need to do here is basically register at orchids and then most of the time, you can just indicate your orchid number during the submission, or you can even directly connect to your orchid account, and then your orchid number will appear in your paper. So that's my first advice. And my second advice is simply to be sure that you check the proof that they create at the end of you submission. When you finish this submission, the system will compile all the information you gave into a proof which basically means that it puts everything together into a PdF and that pdf is what the editor is going to see and you want to make sure that everything appears in the way it's supposed to appear. So, for example, that the proof starts with a cover letter and also that all the figures are displayed correctly. So you want to make sure that all these things are correct. And then once everything is correct, all you need to do is press the submit. But all right, that's it for this lecture and I see in the next one. 12. Desk rejection: what now?: okay, you're submitted your paper and suppose that a few days later, or maybe even on the same day, you get a letter from the editor saying that your paper is rejected. So unfortunately, you've got a desk rejection, and I just want to talk quickly about what this means and what the next steps are. So what does a desk rejection meet? First of all, it does not mean that your paper is bad. In fact, they probably barely read your paper. So instead, it means either that your paper does not fit the journal. Well, enough does not about how good your paper is, but it's about to fit to the journal. Or it means that you simply had bad luck. Don't forget that the desk rejection is a really quick decision based on a glance. And so inevitably in this very quick and rough process, they make mistakes, and they often reject papers that are actually pretty good papers. So don't feel bad about the desk. Rejection publication is a chance game, and so things will happen even if you don't deserve them. And if you get a desk rejection that the next step is simply to submit to another journal if you get some useful feedback from the editor than you can incorporate that. But very often you just need to submit to another job. All right, that is with his lecture and I see in the next one. 13. How to deal with reviews: Okay, suppose that you made it through the desk review and now a few months have passed and you got the reviews. And the question you will face now is what do you do with the reviews? And the trickiest part is that sometimes you may disagree with the feet back, and then the question is, what do you do? And the number one rule is that you should always change something based on the feedback. You should never say that this reviewer is wrong, and therefore, I don't need to adjust anything, even if it's true and the reviewer is really wrong. And the reason for that has to do with how the editor will make the decision about your manuscript. Because the question the editor cares about first and foremost is how will this paper be received by our readers if we publish it and the editor will think of the reviews that he received as a measure off how your paper will be received by readers in the future. So the editor will think that if the reviews don't like it than other readers probably also don't like it, and therefore, if you don't change something based on the feet back then the editor will think that. Okay, you may be right that the review got something wrong there but won't ever really have the same problem. Well, they don't reject the content off the paper for the same reasons. And your task at this stage is to convince the editor that your revised manuscript won't be received in the way anymore. It was received by the reviewers. And the only way you can achieve that is if you do something with a feedback. So always do something with a feedback and the minimum you should do is to improve the clarity off your writing. The minimum ikan do is say that I think that this concern off revere one and two is based on a misunderstanding. Therefore, we have improved the clarity of our writing to prevent that misunderstanding in the future . So you don't necessarily have to go along with everything the Revere suggest. But you should definitely change something so that the editor will think that the concern the reviewers has won't pop up in the future. So the number one rule is always do something with the feedback. Okay, then, once you've made the adjustments. You write them all down in a letter which we call the response letter. And this response letter is really critical. Because in this letter you will try to convince the editor that whatever problem was there before isn't there anymore. So in the next lecture, I will show you how to write that response letter. 14. How to write a compelling response letter: one of the most important pieces in the publication process is the response letter In the response letter, you explain to the editor what you have changed based on the feedback from the editor and the reviewers. So at this point, the decision off the editor will, to a large extent be based on what you write in that response letter. So how do you write an effective response left? And first of all, be sure that you adopt a friendly and collaborative mindset. You should not sound defensive, but open to the suggestions from the editor and the reviewers. In fact, try to think of the editor and the reader is not as opponents, but as partners who happy to improve your paper. Okay. With that in mind, here are the essential parts often effective response letter. First of all, thank the editor and the reviewers for their effort. They are your partners in this process, and you should make them feel that by thanking them right away for their contribution, the next remind the editor off the things he or she liked about your paper. A difficult mistake that beginners open make is that they start talking right away about the criticism, and that way you draw the attention immediately to the negative part of your manuscript. While they were probably also many things that the editor in the rears liked about your manuscript, otherwise you wouldn't have made it to the stage, right? So a better strategy is to start by reminding the editor off the things that he or she liked about your paper. All right, the next. Quote the concerns from the editor and the reviewers and explain how you dealt with him, starting with the concerns of the editor. Because the one person you need to convince at this point is Theo editor. And when you reply to the concerns is a good strategy to first give credit and then address the criticism, for example, by saying something like It is true that. And then he explained what you changed in the manuscript. Okay, it's really drive these points home. Let's have a look at an example of a response letter. Do you, Professor Devin? First of all, we would like to thank you and the readers for the time and effort you invested in our manuscript. We were delighted to hear that you and Revere. One were enthusiastic about X and that all of you agreed that why was a strong point in the following, we will explain how we have improved the manuscript based on your feedback. So notice here that the author start with thank you and that they then remind us off the positive aspects the things of the editor and the reviewers were enthusiastic about. And then the authors moved to the criticism while already promising that they have improved the manuscript. All right now, let's have a look at the first concern and how the authors dealt with it. The biggest concern is that the refocus treatment looks much more like a real treatment than the placebo treatment. In other words, I and the reviews are concerned that the refocus treatment may not be an effective treatment, but simply a better placebo. Now, in response to that, the authors say, we agree that this point deserves further attention and have conducted a small serve ary, in which we ask 20 participants to read the description off each treatment and to rate how much each appears as a real treatment. We found no significant difference, suggesting that the real treatment in the placebo appear equally riel, and we've included this additional survey in our manuscript. So notice here that the replies starts by giving credit. We agree that this point deserves further attention. And then the reply immediately talks about the changes that have been made, which in this case is the small survey that they conducted. And then at the end, the authors also mentioned that this survey was included in the manuscript. So it's not just something that they did to convince the editor, but they have actually included that in the manuscript so that future readers won't have the same concerns. Okay, so this is an example how you can respond to a concern off an editor or a reviewer. If you want to see more of that, I've actually written a whole example of a response letter, which you can download after this lecture, and you will see that basically, all the responses to the concerns follow the same kind of structure. They all start by giving credits, and they make clear what has been changed in the manuscript. And for this lecture. I just want to move toothy, end off the letter, and as you can see the authors and the letter by saying, We hope that you are satisfied with these changes and are open to any suggestions to further improve the manuscript. You are sincerely the authors. All right, so that is how you write an effective response letter. That's it for this lecture and I see in the next one. 15. The final decision: What now?: Okay, Suppose that you submitted your revision, and now it's time for the final decision off the editor. And at this point, there are only two possibilities. And the first possibility is that your paper gets accepted, in which case, congratulations, because that is really a major achievement. From here on, it's gonna be straightforward. Your paper is now gonna be edited for the final publication. So you're likely going to be contacted by one of the editors who is gonna be responsible for making your paper ready for publication. And that editor may ask for some last changes. And once everything seems ready from the perspective of the editor, you will get a proof. And once you give your approval for the final proof, it's gonna be published. Now, the other possibility is that your paper gets rejected. And again, this is something completely normal. And every researcher faces that situations, no matter how successful. So don't interpret too much into it. If your paper gets rejected it, then just use the feedback that you receive to improve your paper and then moved to the next goal. That is, in 99% of the case is what you should do now. One more thing he could do is to argue about the decision with the editor. But I advise you to be careful about this because it may just end up making a negative impression, which makes it more difficult for you to publish in the same journal in the future. So in 99% of the cases, you should just use the feedback to improve your paper and then move to the next journal. Nevertheless, there are cases in which it makes sense to argue, and that's what I'm going to cover in the next election. 16. How to turn an (unfair) rejection into acceptance: If your paper gets rejected at the desk review stage, then there's usually not much you can do. However, if your paper gets rejected at the review stage, then it may be possible to argue and even change the decision of the editor. But you gotta be very careful about that. And first, you should honestly assess whether it makes sense in your case to respond to the rejection . And as a general rule, don't respond if you have merrily an argument against the arguments of the editor and the reviewers. And an argument is something that starts or could start with, Yes, but yes, you make a valid point. But nevertheless, we think, uh, that is usually not a good enough reason to respond to a rejection. Instead, a good enough reason to respond would be if the decision off the editor is based on false information. So, for example, if it's objectively true and you can objectively show that the editor and the reviewers miss ready results, then that could be a good enough reason for response to the rejection. Okay, suppose that you have a good enough reason then the next question is, how should you respond because you're doing something here that is bending the rules a little bit And so you've got to be very careful with how you write your message. So first of all, be sure that you adopt a friendly tone in your message. Don't be angry. Don't be frustrated. Try to write in a mature and friendly way. Also in your message state that you understand the decision off the editor. If you don't say that right away, then the risk is high that the editor is just going to think that you just don't want to accept the decision. So state first that you do understand why the decision has been made Also make clear that you reply is a rare exception that you know, generally replying to rejections and trying to argue about them. But that this is a special case and that that is the reason why you're writing. Also, be sure to apologize for the extra work that you're causing. The editor, the editor has already devoted all the work that he or she owes you. And now you're causing the editor extra work. So be sure that you apologize for that next Take responsibility for whatever went wrong in the decision process. The worst way to write your message would be in an accusing way, saying or implying something like, You just didn't get it or you made a mistake. No, take responsibility for whatever went wrong. This is gonna be much stronger than any kind of accusation and then finally make clear in the a message that the problem is easy to fix because the editor has already devoted a lot of time to your paper. And if you give the impression that it's a very, very complicated issue and it requires a lot of discussion, then the editor may say No, just because it's too much work. So make clear that the problem is easy to fix. All right, to make it as easy as possible for you to write an effective message. I've written a whole example that he can also use as a template for your own letter. So let me walk you through the first paragraph off my example. Message Dear Professor Devin, thank you for your clear feedback. We understand why you arrived at your decision and are not in the habit off arguing with editorial decisions. Nevertheless, we believe that we miscommunicated essential parts of our work and would like to rule out the possibility that your decision was due to a misunderstanding. We would also like to apologize in advance for the additional workload that were causing with our response and promise that we will keep it as brief as possible. So notice here the friendly tone. It starts, actually with a thank you. Then the authors say that we understand why you arrive at your decision, and I'm not in the habit off arguing. Then next, the authors immediately take responsibility for what went wrong. We believe that we miscommunicated essential parts of our work. So here the authors take responsibility, and then they apologize for the extra work that they're causing. This would be a very respectful and potentially effective way to the start of the message. Now, in the next paragraph, you should explain as briefly as possible what exactly went wrong. The main reason for the rejection was that pattern. Why, in our results was not in line with our theory. This led to the impression that our results as a whole I'm not supporting the theory that we claim they support. However, our results to not show pattern. Why? Although it appears as if our results show pattern, why, based on figure three, the pattern depicted in this figure is not significant. Specifically, the bars depicted in Figure three are not confidence intervals, but standard errors. If one falsely interprets the standard errors as confidence intervals, then one can get the impression that the pattern is significant. However, the pattern is not significant and therefore should not be interpreted. If one takes this into account, our results are entirely in line with our theory. Okay, and then in the next paragraph, the authors explain how the issue can be fixed. We believe that this misunderstanding could be addressed relatively easily by replacing the standard errors with confidence intervals. This way, readers can immediately see that pattern. Why is not significant? In addition, we could explicitly mention in the text that pattern Why is not significant. So notice that this paragraph in the message is very short, as it should be, because it should appear as if the problem is easy to fix, and the less words he used to explain how you fix it, the more you give the impression that is easy to fix. Okay. And then in the last paragraph, the authors say again, we would like to apologize for the additional workload that were causing and hope that you agree that this case is worth a brief reassessment. Thank you in advance. And we look forward to your reply. You're sincerely the authors. All right. So that's an example of how you ride a message to the editor to argue about a rejection. You can download this example from The resource is off this lecture. And then you can use this message as a template for your own message, if you like. All right, that's it for this lecture. And I see you in the next one. 17. Conclusion: Hey, congratulations on finishing this course. I hope you got a lot of value out of this course. I certainly try to do my best to put a lot of useful material into it. Even nevertheless, you still have open questions. Don't hesitate to ask me. And finally, please don't forget to leave a rating for this course. This is super important for me and also for future students who would still need to decide whether to take this course or not. All right, that's it. Thank you for the time and effort you put into this course and let me know if I can help you with anything.