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Publishing in Scientific Journals

Figure 3.1 Path of a manuscript through the editorial peer review process; based on
Fig. 1.1 in Weller (2001).

few new alterations. In most cases, major revisions are sent out for
another round of review often to the same reviewers, but sometimes
also to new ones. When an article is rejected, authors often resubmit
(with or without revisions) to another journal. If after a number of
attempts they remain unsuccessful, they may file their manuscript either
in an open repository, so that their findings, although not formally pub-
lished, are available to the field, or in their personal files, where the
manuscript may either stay forever or may be a source of inspiration for
later work.
It is unfortunate that the increase in submissions has made finding a
colleague who is willing to review, a difficult task. Powell (2016) men-
tioned that in 2015 alone, the journal Public Library of Science (PLoS)
One used 76,000 reviewers. Invited colleagues are often busy scientists
and hence they decline to review or worse, they accept and that is the
last one hears of them. Although it is quite acceptable to decline an
invitation to review (scientists are not reviewers by profession), they
should, however, realize that being an author includes being a reviewer
and that the system is only in equilibrium if for each article one writes