thesis corrections rejected

How to Revise and Resubmit Rejected Manuscripts: A Step-by-Step Guide

Manuscript rejection can be hard, but it’s almost expected when you’re competing with thousands of other researchers trying to get their work published. While there are multiple options for researchers after manuscript rejection , most usually choose to prepare a revised manuscript and work to submit it either in the same or different journal. While it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and dejected, it’s essential to approach the revision and resubmission process with a constructive mindset. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you revise and resubmit a rejected manuscript.

Table of Contents

Analyze and understand the feedback received, develop a manuscript revision plan, revise the content in your manuscript, enhance writing for clarity and coherence, address any ethical or technical concerns, do a final reformat and proofread, provide a comprehensive response letter, highlight changes in the manuscript, create a compelling cover letter, submit your revised manuscript, be prepared for possible reiteration.

Carefully review feedback and critique shared by peer reviewers and journal editors explaining why your manuscript didn’t make the cut . Be sure to keep your emotions in check and view the feedback objectively to identify constructive suggestions for improvement. Understanding the exact reasons for manuscript rejection will help you take the appropriate remedial measures.

The second step is to organize the feedback into priority levels, categorizing them into major concerns, medium-level issues, and minor problems. This will give you a clear picture of the amount of changes needed and allow you to address major concerns first before moving on to the minor issues. It helps to create a checklist based on the feedback so you don’t miss out on anything and can ensure that each point of concern is systematically addressed.

This is an opportunity for you to enhance your work, so pay special attention to areas that need improvement. Refine your introduction and research questions to clearly convey the significance of your work. Clarify your research methods, enhance data presentation, and address any statistical concerns. Strengthen the discussion section by addressing reviewer questions and incorporating additional relevant literature.

Once you’ve incorporated all the changes in the content, review the text and make edits to correct language and grammar, spelling, punctuation, and any wordy or complex sentences. Ensure the manuscript is well organized and written in a consistent style to improve overall clarity, coherence and readability.

If the feedback from the reviewers and editors raised any ethical or technical concerns, ensure that you take that into account. Resolve any technical problems such as formatting, referencing, or citation errors and do a check to ensure your revised manuscript complies with all the required ethical guidelines. Experts suggest seeking feedback from colleagues or mentors before finalizing the revised manuscript; this can help identify any issues that need to be addressed before resubmission.

One of the most important points is to ensure that your revised manuscript adheres to journal guidelines. If you plan to submit revised manuscripts to a new journal, your work may require substantial changes to align with the new journal’s formatting and submission guidelines. Do a final proofread to eliminate any grammatical errors, typos, and inconsistencies you may have overlooked.

It’s important to respond to feedback shared, so create a detailed response letter by acknowledging the suggestions for improvement received. Clearly outline how you have addressed each comment or concern raised by the reviewers or journal editors. If you choose not to implement a suggested change, provide a well-justified explanation in your response letter.

One of the most helpful things when resubmitting revised manuscripts is to highlight the changes made to allow for easy scan and checks by busy editors and reviewers. You can choose to use track changes in your word processing software to highlight revisions made to the manuscript based on the feedback shared and include a summary of major changes made in the response letter.

It’s important to have a cover letter when resubmitting your work after manuscript rejection. In the cover letter, succinctly communicate the significance of your work, mention the major revisions made in response to the feedback shared, and thank the reviewers and journal editors for the constructive suggestions and the opportunity to revise and enhance your work. These details can help convince the journal editor and reviewers that the revised manuscript is worth reconsidering.

Sometimes, journal editors provide you the option to revise and resubmit your manuscript, which means they are willing to re-consider your manuscript if you appropriately revise it based on reviewer comments. However, if the journal editor is not ready to reconsider your manuscript again, your next best option is to move on to submitting it to a new journal. In both cases, you will need to submit the revised manuscript through the journal’s submission system following their specific instructions. Ensure you submit all the required documents, including the revised manuscript, cover and response letters, and any other documents requested by the journal.

Despite submitting a revised manuscript, you need to recognize that there may be additional feedback in the review process. So keep your mind open to the possibility of future iterations and address additional revisions as needed to ensure your work is accepted for publication.

Approaching the revision and resubmission process methodically and professionally increases the likelihood of acceptance, whether you’re submitting to the same journal or a different one. Each round of revision brings your manuscript one step closer to publication. Revising and resubmitting a manuscript takes time and effort; by following these steps above, authors can increase their chances of acceptance and move closer to publication success.

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Related Reads:

What next after manuscript rejection 5 options for researchers.

• 5 Reasons for Rejection After Peer Review
• How to Write a Conclusion for Research Papers (with Examples)
• 7 Ways to Improve Your Academic Writing Process

Paraphrasing in Academic Writing: Answering Top Author Queries

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Doing your amendments without losing heart (or your mind)

Many research students in Australia will be planning to submit their thesis next month. Let’s fast forward to that sweet moment you find out your examiners reports are back, or completed your Viva and been told you have passed. Congratulations! Time to ring up the bank and the passport office to get that long awaited ‘Dr’ in front of your name right?

You cannot use the title of Doctor until you graduate.

To graduate you must first get your thesis published in the university library . This involves submitting a ‘camera ready’ or complete copy of your thesis to the relevant administrators, who will then pass it to the librarians to catalogue. I’m writing this post because Laura left a message on the feedback forum asking questions and I realised I have never got around to talking about this aspect of the process.

When I started Whispering, about seven years ago, we used to lodge bound copies in the university library stacks. Now most universities have a public, online repository. This has been a great development; increased accessibility means increased relevance. But before your thesis can take its place there, you must attend to the changes that your examiners have suggested that you make to your thesis.

(If you are in the USA, you may want to stop reading now unless you are interested in what happens in other countries. What I have to say pertains to the Australian and UK system, and some other parts of the world, usually those who were formally colonies of the UK)

How many amendments you have to make will depend on how your thesis was categorised. In most universities I have worked or studied in there is a 5 point categorising system, with varying amounts of time allowed to make the amendments as follows:

• Category One: no changes, around 2 weeks to submit final camera ready document to the online university repository
• Category Two*: minor amendments, usually 6 weeks to submit
• Category Three*: major amendments, mostly 3 months to submit
• Category Four: revise and resubmit for examination, 1 year
• Category Five: fail

*Primary supervisor has to approve the final version.

The examination process is full of ambiguity. One examiner might think problems with how you have numbered the footnotes means you should get a category two, but another might merely tell you to fix it and give you a category one. There’s no need to panic if you get category 1, 2 or 3 – your thesis can still be considered of high quality. I got category two for my PhD, but both examiners checked the ‘outstanding work’ box which made me feel better. I later won the faculty award for best thesis and was one of the runners up for the university prize (dammit!), so category two didn’t hold me back a bit.

Everyone who has amendments will find it disheartening, if not demoralising. But remember that the overwhelming majority of people have to do amendments of some sort. At RMIT, where I used to work, around 89% of people had to do changes suggested by the examiner before they could submit their camera ready document. Here are five suggestions if you get a Category Two or Three and have to negotiate changes with your supervisory team (I’ll write another post about category four because I think the issues are much more extreme for those who have to be re-examined).

1) Do it now, and as quickly as you can

You’ve probably waited up to 5 months for your exam results or the chance to do your Viva. By the time the reports come in life has moved on; you may have a new job or even be living in a new country. It can be hard to even open that document you sweated over and a time limit of a couple of months can seem both daunting and depressing. But just because you have a couple of months, doesn’t mean it will necessarily take that long. I’ve known people to work through category three amendments in less than a week. The category two changes on my PhD took a day of hard work. The trick is to do the bare minimum of the suggested changes, which leads me to my next point.

2) Work out which amendments you really have to make and which ones you will refuse to do

No one’s work is perfect, so swallow your pride and try to read the reports as objectively as you can – how many of these changes do you HAVE to make? The examiner is not the expert – you are; the report is a list of suggestions, not a shopping list. So take control and address only those concerns you think are important.

In a perfect world you will have a civilised meeting with your supervisors to discuss a plan of attack before you make substantive changes to your document. I should caution you, however, that there’s potential for conflict here. Some supervisors, particularly inexperienced ones, are under the impression that their job is to make sure you carry out every suggestion, no matter how ridiculous. Make yourself familiar with the regulations around examination so you can explain them if necessary.

3) Always make a cogent and well argued case for not taking up a suggestion from the examiners

You’ll need good reasons why you will not make a suggested amendment. Some reasons are more acceptable than others and the language you use is important. Never complain it will take too long; state how and why the changes suggested are impractical within the timeframe you have been given. I think you should resist, as far as you are able, any requests to collect more data. A thesis that honestly needs more data was poorly designed in the first place and should never have passed. If data is highlighted as an issue, suggest to your supervisor that you do more analysis or interpretation instead.

4) Summarise the changes as you go

Your supervisors will want to assess the changes you’ve made without reading through the whole thesis again. This is why it’s important to document the changes as you go in the form of a rejoinder . You might use a table with three columns  ‘suggestion’, ‘response’ and ‘page numbers’, itemising each change as you go. Alternatively you can arrange the suggested changes in themes, and make a written statement of the changes under each heading. This is what I did in attached PDF which is a response to Examiner comments on my own PhD. As you will see, it’s a formal document similar to the kind of document you write for journal editors when you have made changes to your article, but perhaps a bit more forceful.

5) Cross the T’s and dot the I’s

Usually you will submit a PDF to the repository, which might present some challenges to those who have video or other data which accompanies the written work. Check the instructions and get help from the library if you need to. Many universities require you to get copyright permission for any images or tables used in your thesis that you did not make yourself. This involves locating the original copyright holder and writing to them.

Getting copyright permission can take anywhere from 24 hours to never; sometimes even locating the original copyright holder can be tricky. I’ll do a post on this process in the near future, but I mention it here to highlight that there are a lot of small details you need to attend to before your thesis will be considered acceptable. I’ve known people to spend months, even up to a year, working on these details – such a waste of time.

I hope this cheat sheet helps you in the final stages. Are you about to complete and have questions about this process? I might not be able to answer all of them, but feel free to ask away in the comments. I’m hoping some of the experienced supervisors, whom I know read the blog, might chime in and help with advice and suggestions in addition to what I have written here.

Finally – best of luck with your submission!

Related Posts

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The Thesis Whisperer is written by Professor Inger Mewburn, director of researcher development at The Australian National University . New posts on the first Wednesday of the month. Subscribe by email below. Visit the About page to find out more about me, my podcasts and books. I'm on most social media platforms as @thesiswhisperer. The best places to talk to me are LinkedIn , Mastodon and Threads.

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How to Avoid Major PhD Corrections | Lex Academic Blog

18 November 2021

In the UK, PhD students usually pass their viva voce – that is, an oral defence of their thesis – with minor or major corrections. As a follow-up to our recently published how-to guide to avoiding minor PhD corrections , we thought it would be useful to produce a post on avoiding major corrections. Whereas minor corrections encompass relatively straightforward issues like typos and formatting (for which we keenly recommend our PhD proofreading service ), as well as small amounts of rewriting, major corrections involve substantial rewriting and restructuring. Passing with minor corrections shows that your thesis is at the right standard. Passing with major corrections, as the University of Sheffield explains, means that ‘the thesis has the potential to merit the award of the degree for which it has been submitted, but does not yet satisfy the requirements for award and contains deficiencies that are in excess of editorial or presentational corrections’. Because major corrections entail more work, then, students are usually given six months, rather than three, to resubmit their thesis.

Despite this, passing with major corrections is by no means a bad result. The key word is ‘passing’, not ‘corrections’, and, in the UK at least, corrections are unlikely to have a long-term impact on your academic career or profile. In the short term, though, there are some very good reasons to try to avoid major corrections. If, in the time between submission and your viva , you’ve managed to obtain your first academic job, the difficulty of juggling major corrections with a full-time post could mean correcting your thesis on a part-time basis and resubmitting after twelve months rather than the usual six. To avoid this, you might solicit help from us, so that we can edit the corrected thesis, and ensure you’ve adequately addressed your examiners’ comments. Additionally, even if it’s not a bad outcome in the long term, passing with major corrections can feel like a blow. Amending typos is relatively painless, but having to make corrections that involve reworking entire sections of prose is daunting and tiring after the years you’ve already put in to reach this point. Here, then, is some advice for avoiding major corrections.

Some of the points in our post about avoiding minor corrections are equally relevant here. Firstly, your literature review – the part of the thesis where you critically analyse the major contributions to and trends within your field – should be complete and up-to-date. Secondly, at your viva , it’s essential to react to constructive criticism positively, rather than defensively. Regarding major corrections specifically, though, this award usually means that, although the research is satisfactory, it has not been articulated clearly or fully enough. One excellent way to assess how well you articulate ideas is to present parts of your thesis at conferences. If your papers regularly elicit questions (the more probing, the better), your ideas are probably clear, since this demonstrates that listeners were able to follow your paper. Take particular note of questions that imply a flaw in your argument or that ask for clarification, then address the relevant sections the next time you sit down to write. Similarly, it’s worth trying to publish a section of your thesis as a journal article (note, however, that publishing too much of your thesis may make publishing it as a book harder, since publishers prefer to publish original material). If you can successfully get an article through peer review, this suggests that your thesis is at the right standard and therefore doesn’t require major corrections. If your article is rejected, the reviewers will (hopefully) explain how to improve it. The point is that feedback from a variety of sources – not just your supervisor(s), who are almost as close to the subject as you are by the end – is valuable if you aim to avoid corrections.

Another common reason for major corrections is that the thesis lacks a clear main argument, structure, or method. Examiners often begin the viva by asking the student to explain the rationale for their thesis and to summarise its main argument or findings. When preparing for your viva , prepare answers to general, predictable questions like ‘why this topic?’, ‘what is your main argument?’, ‘why this methodology?’, and ‘why this structure?’. You should also reflect on why you haven’t used an equally valid alternative structure or methodology. It’s easy to dismiss such questions as too easy and focus instead on the nitty-gritty. But in fact, being able to answer these questions clearly and concisely suggests that, broadly speaking, your thesis is sound – in other words, there’s no reason it should require major corrections. If you don’t have answers to these questions, this implies a fundamental problem. As implied earlier, what you say in your viva can determine the level of corrections imposed.

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Corrections and Resubmission

Information on completing your corrections or resubmission.

Corrections

What is the deadline for completing your corrections.

Your corrections period begins from the date that you are notified of your viva result by the College Postgraduate Research Student Office. The deadline for your corrections depends on the recommendation that was made by your examiners and approved by the College Postgraduate Exams committee (see Exam Board and Outcome stage).

You need to have submitted your corrections by the end of your corrections period. Please note the deadline for submitting your corrections is not the deadline for having your corrections confirmed, or the deadline for submission of your final thesis, only for submission of the revised thesis.

Who checks and confirms your thesis corrections?

It is your Internal Examiner who checks and confirms your thesis corrections, although the External Examiner may also have requested to approve these. In certain circumstances, the Exams Committee may request confirmation from both or all examiners – this will be made clear when you are informed of your viva results.

How do you submit corrections?

Students should  submit one word version of the thesis with all track changes highlighted and one final PDF version, as well as a covering memorandum for the Examiners detailing all changes made. All points raised in the earlier joint report must be addressed in full. Please use the link here:

https://uoe.sharepoint.com/sites/hss/college-office/PGO/student/SitePages/Thesis-revisions.aspx

It is recommended that students make all plagiarism checks and discuss the submission with the Supervisory team before submission for the best possible outcome. The PGR Student Office will then forward the revised thesis  directly to the Internal Examiner, and External Examiner if relevant. The Examiners will be asked to make a decision within 4 weeks. It may be possible to get this decision earlier, although in some cases it might be longer than 4 weeks depending on Examiner availability and the number of corrections. 

Can you get Council Tax exemption during your corrections period?

Once your writing up period is complete, Council Tax exemption is not automatic:  Council Tax Exemption Letter | The University of Edinburgh

If you wish to acquire a Council Tax Exemption letter, you will need to contact your School Postgraduate Office to request this.

Minor corrections or Additional work

For each year of your corrections period, you will need to pay a matriculation fee - see further details on Minor and Major correction fees from the Student Fee Policy:

  Minor and major corrections | The University of Edinburgh

Resubmission

Resubmitting your thesis.

Please note you are required to resubmit your thesis for re‐examination and undertake a second viva voce if you receive a regulation outcome e) or h) but you will be notified of this when advised of the formal outcome.

Students should  submit one word version of the thesis with all track changes highlighted and one final PDF version, as well as a covering memorandum for the Examiners detailing all changes made. All points raised in the earlier joint report must be addressed in full.

It is recommended that students make all plagiarism checks and discuss the submission with the Supervisory team before submission for the best possible outcome. The PGR Student Office will then forward the revised thesis  directly to the Examiners. You will be notified of the date of your second viva voce. 

Please resubmit your Thesis at the link here:

For each year of your Resubmission period you will incur a fee - see further details on Minor and Major correction fees from the Student Fee Policy:

Minor and major corrections | The University of Edinburgh

Find out more about fees with the University's Student Recruitment and Admissions services.

If you are resubmitting, will you have the same examiners?

In most cases, your examiners will be the same as for your original submission. If they have changed you will be notified

What results might you get from your resubmission?

The following outcomes are available for PhD thesis resubmissions.

(a) Award PhD/Doctorate. The thesis satisfies the requirements for the award of the doctoral degree as laid down in the University’s Degree Regulations and Programmes of Study (see www.drps.ed.ac.uk/) as appropriate and the degree should be awarded. No further changes can be made to the thesis after examination; or

(b) Minor Corrections Needed. The thesis satisfies the requirements for the award of the degree except that editorial corrections are required or stated minor weaknesses, as identified by the examiners, must be remedied. In the opinion of the examiners, the student will be able to remedy these without further supervision and without undertaking any further original research. The corrections to the thesis must be completed within three months and are subject to certification by the Internal Examiner(s), and by the External Examiner (where the examiner so requests), before the degree is awarded; or

(f) Award MPhil. The thesis is substantially deficient in one or more of the requirements for the doctoral degree and cannot be revised to satisfy these requirements; but the thesis satisfies the requirements for the degree of MPhil; or

(g) Award MPhil following Minor Corrections. The thesis is substantially deficient in one or more of the requirements for the doctoral degree and cannot be revised to satisfy these requirements. However, the thesis satisfies the requirements for the degree of MPhil except for stated minor corrections in the thesis. The student should be invited to carry out the specified minor corrections as indicated by the examiners. The corrections to the thesis must be completed within three months and are subject to certification by the Internal Examiner(s), and by the External Examiner (where the examiner so requests), before the degree is awarded; or

(i) Award MSc by Research. The thesis is substantially deficient in respect of all or any of the requirements for the degree and cannot be revised to satisfy these requirements or the requirements of the MPhil. However, the work is of sufficient quality to merit the award of MSc by Research; or

(j) Fail. The thesis is substantially deficient in respect of all or any of the requirements for the degree and cannot be revised to satisfy these or any other research degree requirements.

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• Indian J Orthop
• v.52(2); Mar-Apr 2018

Rejection of Manuscripts: Problems and Solutions

Ish kumar dhammi.

Department of Orthopaedics, UCMS and Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, New Delhi, India

Rehan-Ul-Haq

All researchers want their work published. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. Manuscript rejection is a common occurrence. 1 , 2 A study by Hall and Wilcox concluded that 62% of the published papers have been rejected at least once. 3 The rejection rate is higher in better quality journals. 4 The rejection rate of Indian Journal of Orthopaedics (IJO) in the last 5 years has ranged from 57% to 86%. This editorial discusses the common reasons because of which manuscripts are rejected and the ways and means to deal with them [ Table 1 ].

Top 10 reasons of rejection of manuscript in Indian Journal of Orthopaedics

One of the most common reasons for rejection of manuscript is the importance of the research topic. 5 For a manuscript to be acceptable, it must deal with a topic which is new, important, interesting to the target reader, and most importantly advances knowledge and understanding in a certain field. If the subject matter under consideration is too well known, too specialist, or too far removed from patient care and public policy, then there is a high chance of it being rejected. 2 , 5 The research question must also be framed well, and research planned in a way that research question is answered at the end of the research.

Poor hypothesis, study design, methodology, and improper use of statistics are other reasons for rejection of a manuscript. 6 Involving colleagues more conversant with the concepts of study designs, methodology, and statistics during the conception phase of the study can avoid this problem. Moreover, in this era of evidence-based medicine, authors must endeavor to produce high-level evidence articles. Doing a retrospective case series or comparative study on a topic where a robust randomized controlled trial has already been done is not a good idea. Similarly, studies with small sample size, short followup or retrospective design have a high chance of rejection. Case reports are only accepted if they have a clear new message. 7

Every journal has a well-defined mandate and target audience. Authors must ensure that they submit to a journal within the scope of which their manuscript lies. Manuscripts outside the scope are usually rejected without an external peer review. 2 At the IJO we usually publish clinical studies or basic research papers with a strong focus on clinical practice as our primary readers are ‘practicing orthopaedic surgeons.’ Manuscripts which do not meet this criteria have a higher rejection rate. One free online resource available to find the right journal to which one can submit one's paper is “JANE” (Journal/Author Name Estimator). 8 JANE helps authors in finding the right journal by comparing the title and/or abstract of manuscript with documents in the PubMed to find the best matching journal. The other more traditional approach is to carefully scrutinize the websites of the journal to understand its scope, and go through previous issues of the journal to understand the type of articles the journal usually accepts.

Ethical misconduct is another reason for rejection of manuscripts. 9 According to the World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki, “in medical research on human subjects, considerations related to the well-being of the human subjects should take precedence over the interests of science and society”. 10 Ideally, authors must take an Institutional Ethical Committee [IEC] approval in all research they undertake and add a statement of the same in their manuscripts. Clinical trials must be registered with appropriate national authorities such as Clinical Trial Registry of India [CTRI] setup by the Indian Council of Medical Research [ICMR] in case of manuscripts originating in India. 11

Plagiarism of any type must be avoided. 12 It can easily be detected and can ruin an author's reputation. One must always cite the original source when using somebody else's ideas or words. 12 If one is using a part of another text verbatim, quotation marks must be used. It is a good idea to run ones manuscript through a plagiarism check software like www.ithenticate.com , www.grammarly.com , www.turnitin.com etc. before submission. Similarly if one is using a previously published figure or table then permission from the publisher should be taken.

Fabrication and falsification 13 though more difficult to detect can result in an outright rejection of a paper. Similarly, practices of duplicate publication, duplicate submission, redundant publication, and salami slicing should be avoided. 12

Suboptimum reporting of results may result in rejection of a manuscript or a major revision. 2 Ideally, the results must be aligned to the aims and objectives. A validated and commonly used score like Harris Hip Score [HHS], Disability of Arm, Shoulder and Hand [DASH] score, VAS Score etc., must be used as a primarily outcome measure. All participant data, outcome data, ancillary data, and other observations including complications must be reported. 14 Both over- and under-analysis of data must be avoided. Texts, tables, graphs, and photographs must be used judiciously in the results section. 14

Going overboard while writing the discussion may result in major revision or rejection of a manuscript. 2 Ideally, the discussion section should have the following broad heading; a brief summary of the study and results, comparison of results with the existing literature, clinical evaluation of the work, importance of the findings, strengths and weaknesses of the study. At the end of the discussion readers must know whether the research hypothesis has been proved or not. Similarly conclusions must be based on the results. New idea or concepts should not be introduced in conclusion section.

If the manuscript does not follow the journal style detailed in the instruction to authors it may not result in an outright rejection of manuscript, but it is an important reason for a technical modification. Authors must familiarize themselves with the journal style by going through the instructions to authors carefully and also through previously published articles of the same journal and frame their manuscripts accordingly. Standard guidelines based on the type of study such as Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials [CONSORT] statement, Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis [PRISMA] statement; Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology [STROBE] statement; Case Report [CARE] 15 guidelines in consultation with the journal guidelines must be used for preparation of the manuscript. Many a times, it is seen that authors submit their manuscript in the form of a condensed thesis, or text book chapter. This should be avoided.

Poor use of language, grammar, and spelling can also be an important reason for a technical modification, revision, or rejection. One must proof read ones manuscript multiple times before submitting it to a journal. Authors whose native language is not English must take the help of their colleagues or other native English speakers to improve the language quality of their manuscripts. At the IJO, we make all efforts not to reject a manuscript only because of poor language, especially if the topic and scientific content is good. However, if the message of the paper is not clear because of poor language and authors do not improve it even after multiple requests, the editor has to sometimes reject such manuscripts.

Improper reporting of references may again be a reason because of which a manuscript may be sent back for technical modification. One must always report the references in a standardized format. The IJO wants its author to report the references in Vancouver style which is also used by MEDLINE and PubMed. In the Vancouver style, references are cited using numbers as they appear in the text followed by the reference list in chronological order at the end of the manuscript. We encourage authors to use a reference manager such as EndNote, Mendeley, Zotero, or JabRef, to avoid mistakes.

In spite of an author's best effort, if a manuscript does get rejected, the author must not give up because giving up will eliminate all chances of publication success. The author must go through the rejection letter very carefully 16 and identify the reasons for rejection. 17 If there is a fatal flaw with the study design which cannot be rectified, then it may be a prudent idea to not pursue publication. If the manuscript has been rejected because of inappropriate choice of journal, then it is wise to incorporate all the changes suggested by the reviewers and authors and submit the manuscript to a more appropriate and lower impact journal. However, if it is a conditional rejection which is usually the case, the best option is to prepare an appropriate response and revise the manuscript according to the reviewers’ comment and resubmit it to the journal as promptly as possible.

Again, authors must understand that the main aim of the submission to publication process is to improve the overall quality of the authors’ work. 18 They must take rejections positively and use the reviewers’ comments to improve their manuscripts. Publishing a paper is hard work, but the fruits are worth the effort.

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U.S. reporter Evan Gershkovich has now spent a whole year jailed in Russia

Charles Maynes

U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich looks out from inside a defendants' cage before a hearing to consider an appeal on his extended pretrial detention, at the Moscow City Court in Moscow, on Feb. 20. Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

MOSCOW — Friday marks one year since Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was detained by Russian security forces on spying allegations — the first such detention of an American journalist on espionage charges in Russia since the latter days of the Cold War.

The Journal — which vehemently rejects the charges — observed the somber anniversary with an #IStandWithEvan tribute.

Family, friends and journalists across the media landscape took part in a marathon reading of Gershkovich's articles — penetrating vignettes of contemporary Russia that highlighted his deep knowledge of the country, its politics and its people.

Wall Street Journal's Emma Tucker on Gershkovich detention

Gershkovich, 32, the son of Russian Jewish émigrés who was born and raised in New Jersey, had grown up in a dual-language household absorbing American and Russian cartoons, books and pop culture.

Whether that background, his sharp reporter's eye or something else may have played a role in his arrest remains unclear.

What is certain is that his detention is yet another irritant in U.S.-Russian relations already at Cold War-like lows following the Kremlin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Biden administration has said securing Gershkovich's freedom is a priority.

His arrest has only further highlighted Western suspicion of a growing pattern of "hostage diplomacy" in Moscow — one in which Russian authorities are accused of ensnaring Americans on spurious legal charges to see what deals emerge.

A journalist detained

Gershkovich was on a reporting assignment in Russia's Ural mountain city of Yekaterinburg in March of last year when he was detained by agents from Russia's Federal Security Service, the FSB, at a downtown steakhouse.

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Witnesses at the Bukowski Grill reportedly had little time to even see who was the target when government agents suddenly stormed the restaurant. Within seconds, they had pulled Gershkovich's sweater over his head and frog-marched him out into an unmarked van.

The next day, Gershkovich reappeared in a Moscow court and was formally charged with trying to obtain state secrets — a penalty for which he faces up to 20 years in jail if convicted.

A journalist, not a spy

Gershkovich and the Journal immediately rejected the spying allegations, saying Gershkovich was working in Russia with official press accreditation from the Foreign Ministry.

In fact, he'd been reporting on the country since 2017 — initially for The Moscow Times and then the Agence France-Presse (AFP) before taking a job with the Journal in 2022. His credentials had been subject to repeat security reviews by the Russian government.

Yet none of that appeared to matter. The Russian government insisted Gershkovich was guilty of the espionage charges — without providing any evidence. Instead, they saw his journalist status as possible proof of his guilt.

Journalists watch a TV screen broadcasting a hearing on Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich's case from a courtroom at the Moscow City Court on April 18, 2023. Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP hide caption

Journalists watch a TV screen broadcasting a hearing on Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich's case from a courtroom at the Moscow City Court on April 18, 2023.

"Unfortunately, it's not the first occasion when the status of a 'foreign correspondent,' a journalist visa and accreditation have been used by foreigners in our country to cover up activities that aren't journalism," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova wrote on social media shortly after Gershkovich's arrest.

"It's not the first famous Westerner we've caught red-handed."

The U.S. government moved quickly to label Gershkovich "wrongfully detained" — a designation that makes him a hostage in the eyes of the U.S. government.

Cold War replay

Gershkovich's arrest echoed Moscow's detention of another American reporter — decades prior in what seems like a different era.

In 1986, Nicholas Daniloff, a correspondent with U.S. News & World Report , was arrested in a KGB sting operation in Moscow. Like Gershkovich, Daniloff was of Russian heritage. He and his publication, too, rejected the charges as a sham.

The American spent 14 days in Moscow's Lefortovo Prison before negotiations between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev — then the USSR's new reform-minded leader — cut a deal to set him free.

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"Time in Lefortovo was mental torture," Daniloff wrote in an article later, recalling his repeat sessions with a KGB interrogator.

"He played with my emotions, posing alternatively as a 'good cop' and a 'bad cop.' He controlled all information that reached me. He controlled my food, my exercise, my life. [By] the time I was freed, he had made me feel guilt where there was none."

There are also Daniloff's accounts of conditions in a cell "measured five-paces long, three-paces wide."

U.S. reporter Nicholas Daniloff after his release from being detained in Russia. Cynthia Johnson/Getty Images hide caption

U.S. reporter Nicholas Daniloff after his release from being detained in Russia.

"There were three steel cots painted blue, a small table for each prisoner, a washbowl and primitive toilet with a wooden cover just high enough to be uncomfortable. The place was clean, but there was a distinctive smell," Daniloff wrote.

Nearly four decades later, recent prisoners say little has changed .

Life on hold

The past year has seen a continuous loop of closed-court hearings in which judges have extended Gershkovich's pretrial detention time and again.

The judges have rejected cash bail offers by the Journal's parent company, Dow Jones. They have also denied appeals to move him to house arrest pending a trial, whose date never seems to come.

A Moscow court has rejected 'WSJ' reporter Evan Gershkovich's detention appeal

Yet Gershkovich's family and friends say he remains strong — with his letters full of his trademark optimism and humor.

"We currently have a joke going back and forth about this framed photo of him," his sister, Danielle Gershkovich, said in an interview with NPR's All Things Considered last October.

"And I'm joking about where I should put it in the apartment, and he recently suggested, put it directly in front of the TV so you can see his face," she said.

Journalist Evan Gershkovich tells family he's 'not losing hope' in Russian detention

Evan Gershkovich has also taken advantage of one of Lefortovo's few benefits: a decent library collection of Russian classics by the likes of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky and other literary giants.

"He's read a lot of books. And he told us maybe he will write some good novel at the end of this story, about himself," his Russian lawyer Tatiana Nozhkina told NPR following a hearing last April.

Evan Gershkovich awaits trial in Russia, but his family finds hope in his letters

But there's no denying the slow grind of a year spent awaiting trial with no immediate court date in sight.

This week, a judge extended his detention by another three months — until late June. Again, no indication of when Gershkovich might expect trial.

U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy called the latest ruling "particularly painful" — noting the journalist had spent a year awaiting charges that were "fiction" from the outset.

The Independent Association of Publishers' Employees and Wall Street Journal journalists rally in Washington, D.C., on April 12, 2023, calling for the release of reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been held in Russia since March 29, 2023. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

The Independent Association of Publishers' Employees and Wall Street Journal journalists rally in Washington, D.C., on April 12, 2023, calling for the release of reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been held in Russia since March 29, 2023.

"Evan's case is not about evidence, due process, or rule of law. It is about using American citizens as pawns to achieve political ends," the ambassador said in a statement Tuesday.

Tracy specifically pointed to the case of Paul Whelan , another American the U.S. has designated "wrongfully detained."

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But there are others languishing in Russian prisons, including Alsu Kurmasheva , a Russian American journalist with the U.S.-government funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty news service, and Marc Fogel , an American schoolteacher.

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Prisoner trade rumors.

If there's an upside amid the current situation, it's that prisoner exchanges between Moscow and Washington remain possible despite current hostilities.

Trevor Reed, a former Marine who says he was wrongly convicted of assaulting a Russian police officer, was released by Russia in April 2022.

Brittney Griner , a WNBA basketball star sentenced to nine years on drug possession, was freed later that same year.

In each case, the price was steep: The Biden administration released Viktor Bout, a convicted arms dealer, for Griner. Reed was traded for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a pilot convicted of narcotics smuggling.

White House officials defended the moves as difficult — but necessary — decisions.

Detractors argued the trades merely encouraged more detentions. Perhaps even that of a Wall Street Journal reporter.

Either way, few, including the U.S. government, expect much from a Russian justice system in which over 99% of all criminal cases end in conviction.

And so the Biden administration says it continues to make offers aimed at securing the release of Gershkovich and others.

Evan Gershkovich stands inside a defendants' cage before a hearing to consider an appeal on his extended pretrial detention at the Moscow City Court on Sept. 19, 2023. Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Evan Gershkovich stands inside a defendants' cage before a hearing to consider an appeal on his extended pretrial detention at the Moscow City Court on Sept. 19, 2023.

In turn, Russian President Vladimir Putin has indicated Moscow is open to a swap provided circumstances are right.

Asked about the Gershkovich case in a February interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Putin was even more explicit. The Russian leader strongly suggested he would be willing to trade Gershkovich for Vadim Krasikov, a suspected FSB assassin currently serving a life sentence for murder in Germany.

Further muddying the picture: Multiple news reports allege that German authorities had tied Krasikov's potential release to the Kremlin leader agreeing to free the jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Neither U.S. nor German officials have verified those accounts. And Navalny died under still unexplained circumstances in a remote Arctic prison last month, making any potential deal impossible.

In the meantime, Gershkovich remains in Lefortovo prison, reading, writing, waiting — his story like one he himself would report on in ordinary times.

"Evan has displayed remarkable resilience and strength in the face of this grim situation," said Ambassador Tracy in her statement this week.

"But it is time for the Russian government to let Evan go."

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US says Russia rejected deal to free detained Americans

State department says Moscow turned down ‘substantial’ proposal to secure release of Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan

Russia rejected a new proposal to free two detained Americans, the Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich and former marine Paul Whelan, the US government has said.

A state department spokesman, Matthew Miller, told reporters that the US made several proposals for a deal to return the two men, “including a substantial one in recent weeks”.

“That proposal was rejected by Russia,” he said.

Miller said that the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and President Joe Biden would keep trying to find a way to free the pair, considered “wrongfully detained” by the state department.

“They never should have been arrested in the first place. They should both be released immediately,” Miller said.

“There is no higher priority for the secretary of state. There is no higher priority for the president.”

He declined to give further details on the proposal, including whether Russians could be released.

The United States, despite a sharp deterioration of ties since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has arranged two prisoner swaps – including one that freed the basketball star Brittney Griner , who was detained over traces of cannabis.

Gershkovich, 32, was arrested during a reporting trip at the end of March in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, becoming the first western reporter to be jailed on spying charges in Russia since the Soviet era.

The reporter, his newspaper and the US government all strongly deny he was involved in espionage.

A Moscow court last week extended his detention until January.

Whelan worked in security for a US vehicle parts company when he was arrested in Moscow in 2018 and has always asserted that the evidence against him was falsified.

His family said last week that Whelan was assaulted in prison by a fellow inmate, potentially because of his nationality.

• US foreign policy

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