Menghindari Penolakan Editors dan Reviewers Agoes Soegianto Departemen Biologi Fakultas sains dan teknologi Universitas airlanga Diambil dari: Gustaf Olsson dan Helmut Kroiss Editor-in-Chief, Water Science & Technology MJIIT, UTM, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, September 2017

Editors and reviewers look for.. • Relevance to the journal scope and objectives • Originality – what’s new about subject, treatment or results? • Clarity and quality of writing – does it communicate well? • Conclusions – are they valid and objective? • Good, short title, keywords and abstract

Editors & reviewers look for.. • Does the paper – provide insight into an important issue? – tell a good story? • Is the paper interesting for an international audience? • Does the insight from the paper stimulate new, important questions? • Is there a high probability that the paper will be read and cited by others?

Editor’s view: a good paper (1) • Is driven or inspired by technological, industrial, management, environmental, economical or social challenges; • Contributes to new scientific methods or new applications of known methods; • The scientific methods to get the results are appropriate

Editor’s view: a good paper (2) • Describes new directions and early findings • Triggers constructive discussions – gives a high probability for citation; • Contains adequate references, good illustrations and tables;

Editor’s view: a good paper (3) Good description of the work – Clear language – Good graphs – Clear problem and objective statements – Clear message of the results – Easily comprehend - good flow of explanations – Specific information – The story is built up consistently – No repetitions or redundancy in the paper

Editor’s view: a good paper (4) Description - Materials and methods: • Based on the paper: can another researcher repeat the research? • Are the experimental procedures accurately described? • Comparability of data • Relevant and justified results • Validation of the approach

Editor’s view: a good paper (5) • Advances the level of knowledge • One message – reliable and valid – Answering a specific question • Not too long (check instructions for authors!) – Typical length 6000 – 8000 words, including figures and references

Editor’s view: a good paper (6) • Good literature review – Relevant literature – Makes it possible to compare results • Encourages communication of research

Editor’s view: reasons for rejection (1) • There is insufficient new and interesting information in the paper • The paper is too commercial (essentially advertising a product or a company) • The paper’s English is too poor to be understood by an international readership – use the 'spell- check' and 'grammar-check‘ functions of your word processor.

Editor’s view: reasons for rejection (2) • Local issues (water quality in Skudai river etc.) with insufficient interest for an international audience • Lack of history on the topic (insufficient literature references) • Lack of discussion or conclusion • Too few references or mostly self-references

Editor’s view: reasons for rejection (3) • Data collection without any comparisons • Lack of quantitative information (data, tables etc) • Too long (consult the journal’s Instructions to Authors) • Findings not generalised or used to build theory • Will probably not be cited

Upfront rejection - why • Some submissions are intrinsically unsuitable for publication. • It is helpful to all concerned if they can be screened out from the review procedures straight away. • This avoids wasting the time and effort of authors, editors and reviewers.

Upfront rejection 1 – format criteria • Content matter outside the scope of the journal • The English is too poor to be readily understood • Not properly structured as a scientific paper – Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion – Must include: Abstract, keyword, conclusion • Inadequate reference list

Upfront rejection 2 – format criteria • Paper too short (< about 3000 words) – probably too little information • Paper too long (> 5000 words) – Mostly asked to shorten the paper – There may be special reasons, then motivate! • Paper promotes a commercial product

Upfront rejection 3 – editorial criteria • Lack of novelty (including repetition of well established results) • Lack of interest (triviality of results) • Incoherence of work or its description • Plagiarism (Serious! Should be reported to the Journal Office)

References (1) • It is important to refer to what has been done earlier. Document your findings and sources. • You can of course refer to your own works but is important to refer to > 5 other references. If most of the references are your own papers – it is a reason for rejection • Typically 20-30 references. Not too many!

References (2) Make sure that you have recent references as well as the original references – at least one reference from the last 5 years • The references should be understood by an international audience (i.e. English) • Should be retrievable by a librarian!

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