The fate (so far) of my 50 submitted papers

At the end of October, I submitted a paper that’s been hanging over me for a couple of years. I’ve been in the habit of tracking nearly all my submissions since I started out in palaeontology, it happens that this one is number 50 in the list. It feels like an interesting time to stop and take stock of them all.

Before I get into the details of what happened to those submissions, I want to note that of the 31 papers listed in my CV, eight are not listed in my submissions database. Five of them I didn’t track because I was not the lead author and so not involved in the submission process (Sharing: public databases combat mistrust and secrecy; Running a question-and-answer website for science education: first hand experiences; Neural spine bifurcation in sauropod dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation: ontogenetic and phylogenetic implications; The Anatomy and Phylogenetic Relationships of “Pelorosaurus” becklesii (Neosauropoda, Macronaria) from the Early Cretaceous of England; The Moral Dimensions of Open). And three more don’t appear because they were minor works that didn’t go through the full formal review process (The Open Dinosaur Project; Better ways to evaluate research and researchers; Comment (Case 3700) – Support for Diplodocus carnegii Hatcher, 1901 being designated as the type species of Diplodocus Marsh, 1878).

That means that the 50 submissions I have in my database represent only 23 published papers — a hit-rate of less than 50%. What’s going on?

Well, first, my submissions list includes three “published” papers that aren’t on my CV: a Europasaurus entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a nomenclatural correction to my Giraffatitan JVP paper, and the Barosaurus neck preprint. So that means 26 of the 50 submissions are published.

What about the rest?

Five more submissions are still open: the Barosaurus neck paper based on that preprint, still in review limbo after eight years; an accepted chapter in a long-delayed edited volume; a paper on Joni Mitchell that was given Major Revisions from a humanities journal for (I thought) spurious reasons; an anatomy paper at PeerJ whose revisions should soon be finished; and the newly submitted paper that I mentioned at the top of the page.

Four more submissions, I have just abandoned. One was the original submission of what became Almost all known sauropod necks are incomplete and distorted, which I later resubmitted as new after I stalled for six years on responding to reviews. Another was a short note correcting a nomenclatural error in a Nature paper, which was basically ignored. Two more are chapters for the Phylonyms volume, which … well, that’s a long and depressing story for another day.

That leaves 15 submissions that were rejected. Some of these are dead forever: for example, the first palaeo paper I ever submitted, a dinosaur diversity analysis, which I ended up “publishing” as a sort of post-preprint ten years later. Some I gave up on after rejection, such as an attempt to reconcile phylogenetic and Linnaean taxonomy (rejected twice), a brief summary of dinosaur diversity that I optimistically sent to Science when I was young and stupid, and an RWA-era comment on what a “private-sector research work” is (three times at different journals!).

The other eight rejections, more happily, having been rejected from one or more journals eventually found homes elsewhere: my first (eventually) published paper, on phylogenetic nomenclature of diplodocoids; the Xenoposeidon description, our neck-posture paper (twice!), Why Giraffes Have Long Necks (also twice!), the Brontomerus description, and the paper on vertebral orientation (rejected from PeerJ as “out of scope”, idiotically).

So the final score comes out as follows:

• 26 published
• 5 still open (of which I am optimistic about at least three)
• 4 abandoned
• 15 rejected (representing 10 distinct manuscripts, of which six have since been published)

What to make of all this?

One thing to think about here is whether 50% is actually a decent batting average. Maybe a 50-50 chance of any given submission making it into the journal in question is not too bad?

And the reason why that may be so is that persistence tends to pay off: of my ten rejected manuscripts, more than half have gone on to be published elsewhere — garnering 400 citations so far (42, 57, 156, 95, 48 and 2, in chronological order). That is a happy thought to have in mind the next time I run into a rejection.

Another encouraging observation is that the rejections have tended to be concentrated towards the earlier part of my career: 14 of them in the eight years from 2004 to 2012, and only one in the twelve years since. I think there are three reasons for this, two of them good and one bad.

1. I’ve got better at writing papers. That’s good.
2. I’ve got better at judging what to submit and where. I’ve stopped aiming optimistic opinion pieces at Science and Nature and Biological Reviews. That’s good, too.
3. I’m better known now, and that’s bad. Or, at least, it’s bad that being better known means I get better outcomes.

As scientists of course we strive to evaluate every work on its merits, not according to the name or status of the author, and deliberate actions are often taken to make sure that’s what’s done. For example, the reviewers don’t know who wrote the abstracts submitted to get a talk at SVP or SVPCA. And yet, and yet. The truth is that I have had a few ad-hominem reviews, and I’m sorry to say they were all concentrated in the first few years of my career.

Dear SV-POW! readers: don’t be That Guy. When you’re asked to review a manuscript by someone you’ve never heard of, put the fact that you’ve never heard of him or her aside, and review the damn manuscript, not the author. That’s not too much to ask.

Anyway, that’s my fifty submissions in 20 years. (In fact, now I come to check the dates, I see that today is exactly the 20th anniversary of getting back the Reject Without Review verdict on the first palaeo paper I even submitted!). Let’s hope I can get more efficient in the next 20.

Source: https://svpow.com/2024/11/08/the-fate-so-far-of-my-50-submitted-papers/