This is a continuation of my previous blog or you can read this on its own.

Once you submit the paper, you can sit back and relax, or can you?? Now comes the dreaded wait period whether it will be accepted or rejected straight away. My supervisor says that a quick rejection is better because it helps you not waste time and you can get on with next submission. I know it feels like all the hard work of submission process is gone but you can think of it as a learning step. Ok so you first wait for the first decision to see if it is rejected or forwarded to reviewers. Journals also have this online update system where you can check the status of your paper whether it’s in progress, or with reviewer and so on. You can always check the journal’s publication process, every journal has its own timing, from there you can have an idea how long the whole process will take. Usually, first it is seen by the editor and they can say if it is suitable for the journal or not. They then decide whether to reject straight away or assign reviewers. Here comes my advice from another blog that do not hesitate to contact an editor if you are not sure, if they say its suitable, it means you can be confident and submit your paper and the rest then is up to the reviewers if they reject, suggest minor corrects or major corrections or re-submission. I have experienced all of these, I have seen straight away rejection, that was my PhD first chapter as a manuscript. I have seen all sorts of verdicts – re-submission, major corrections and minor corrections (which are the best 😊).

Whenever I get comments from reviewer, I usually start with the easy ones and tick them off. If there are any tricky ones, I discuss with the team and work on it. If there were many comments to address, I would sometimes be naughty 😊and would not revise may be one or two comments, if these were not that important and I would justify in the “response to reviewers’ letter” why I want to keep it as it is and not revise. And if I remember it went fine, there was no issue. Also, generally, I think if a reviewer has a comment which we do not agree with, we can justify that why we are going to keep it as it is but the justification has to be genuine.

I struggle with procrastination whenever I receive comments, whether it is from reviewer or line manager . So I then break it into small doable tasks starting with very minor ones such as spelling or grammar correction or inserting a chemical product specification name used in methodology. If you too suffer from that, you are not alone. I have blog on how to overcome procrastination where I have shared my experience and what works for me.

Once the revised version is complete, resubmission should be pretty straightforward. Usually, after re-submission, if the editor is happy with it, the paper is accepted. But sometimes, re-revision or multiple revisions are required, which in my case it usually used to be minor revisions following a major revision.   

One more thing that I want to share is that one of my chapters was not something suitable as an original article, but my supervisor suggested that this chapter could be submitted as a short paper. What I did, as I mentioned earlier, I got in touch with the editor of a journal and showed my interest to publish my chapter as short communication in their special issue (I had previously received email that they have this special issue coming up and it happened to be in the area of my research). I got positive response and then I worked on that paper, got comments from my supervisors, revised it and then submitted to the journal and it was successfully accepted and published.

I also want to share my experience of my first paper of PhD. It was not a smooth ride but I am glad that I persevered and it finally got published in a well-read journal. Now I don’t remember the details but at that time it was hectic. It was something like rejection straight away from one journal. Then another journal suggested changes but even then rejected and asked re-submission. Then re-submission after revision. Then again major corrections and so on. But it was A LOT of revision but thanks to my supervisory team, with their help and my perseverance it was finally accepted in a well-read and a good impact factor journal. I even had to do additional practical work in the lab as suggested by a reviewer!! But I didn’t give up. If I had become disappointed with that first chapter experience and have not carried on with it, I would never have published all the chapters. Interestingly the following chapters were published with way less obstacles. Like I mentioned I did get in touch with editors and shared the title and abstract to see if these papers were suitable, and also for one paper I got a full discount on article publication fee.

I would say sometimes these papers require perseverance and sometimes it demand little effort. It of course depends on the type of work, the way it is represented but also depends on what kind of reviewers are going to review your paper which is not in your control. But in the end it is worth trying and who knows you too may publish all your chapters as papers in good journals 😊 . Just remember that we all are humans we may have good days and bad days, productive days and non-productive days, but one should stay positive and carry on…