Dear Solutions Lab, my first paper from my PhD has now been rejected three times. My co-authors are really supportive, but I can’t help feeling embarrassed and a bit deflated. How do you deal with the feeling that maybe it’s you, not just the paper, when rejections pile up. I haven’t told them yet about the latest rejection, but I expect the last author has also got the same system notification, but they haven’t been in touch and it’s been a few days.
— Feeling a little flat!
Hello,
I’ll leap in with a strong opinion and say it absolutely is not you. The system is set up such that the majority of people when asked to ‘review’ something instead read the word ‘criticise’ and will find fault even if there is little to find. As such, things get rejected for often trivial reasons. There are absolutely things you can take from every rejection. My most recent paper discussion was really improved by responding to reviewers comments, but the one thing you shouldn’t do is take them personally. It’s just a paper, it will come out somewhere at some point.
Your co-authors will be being supportive because they’ve likely been through this a whole bunch of times before, the longer you stick around in science the more you realise that these things will be what they will be and that sometimes you just have to go with the flow. You mention not having heard from them and that they likely received the same notification but haven’t been in touch. They may have indeed heard/been notified but mine often slip my radar if I have other things on my plate so don’t feel embarrassed about bringing it up. They’re not not discussing it with you, they’re likely just busy and haven’t had a chance to slot it into their diary. They absolutely do not think that this rejection is any reflection on you as a scientist. A paper is a group effort, you will have decided where to send it as a group, you will have written it as a group, you are not alone and therefore this cannot sit solely on your shoulders.
Papers are just one part of what we do as academics, whilst we do still hang a lot of our ego and our identity on them they’re not everything so take some time to realise you already got a whole PhD which is WAY more of an achievement. Set the paper aside until you’ve had a meeting about it with everyone and focus on finding your joy in other aspects of what you do.
It will get easier, I promise.
Hi there, and thank you for reaching out!
First – the proactive stuff
Are these desk rejections from Editors, or rejections post-review?
If the former, ask a couple of PIs/senior Post Docs in your department to have a **quick** scan through and give you honest feedback about whether you are targeting the right level of journal. If you’re getting a desk rejection, it may be a simple impact judgement from a non-expert editor, and you need to aim a bit lower. If you’ve already reached a level of journal you really don’t want to go below, then look into journals that don’t make an impact judgement such as Scientific Reports or PloS One.
If the latter, first, step away for a few days. When you have got over the initial disappointment, go into the reviews. Which comments are fair and constructive? Which might be arising from a misunderstanding of the way you’ve communicated an idea? Which can you easily address with a re-phrase, and which would need extra experiments? Are those experiments worth doing, or is it a better idea to address what you can, and add to the discussion a caveat about what you couldn’t do? If you have received reviews that you think that you can address 70-80% of, but you have still been rejected, then look into the review transfer policies for the journal. To reduce the work for both authors and reviewers, many journals have the opportunity to pass reviews on, either within their own titles (Nature > Nature Neuroscience, Cell > Cell Reports), or through review transfer agreements (such as the Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium: https://nprc.incf.org/participating-journals/ – this one actually saved my sanity when my paper was bounced 3 times with good reviews during COVID lockdown with a 4-9 month old baby).
Second – the wishy-washy stuff
This is unfortunately one of those resilience boosting occasions where the best thing you can do is work on how you personally deal with rejection. Rejection is a fact of life for all scientists – in grant writing, in paper writing, and in hypothesis proving! You cannot escape it, so you have to figure out how to face it. Rejection is not something to be embarrassed about, as it happens to all of us. If you see a therapist, talk to them about strategies. If you don’t, find a mentor who you can talk to about it, or set up a peer mentoring session / visit to the pub to talk about it. Don’t be afraid to admit you “failed” to your peers – they will all have stories of rejection that will make you feel better. You are not alone, and don’t need to deal with it by yourself. Finally, make sure that you have things outside of science/the lab that you are engaged in and care about, so that a rejection in one domain of your life doesn’t feel like the end of the world – just a temporary hiccup. As that’s all it is.
Good luck! You will get there.
Dr Becky Carlyle
Dr Yvonne Couch
