How editors think about paper submissions, and an announcement

One of the thorniest parts of being editor-in-chief of a leading journal is having to reject so many papers, knowing how hard the authors worked and how much is involved in a submission. Especially for junior authors with little experience with the publication process, those rejection letters are so unwelcome, but everyone gets them and learns to brush off and go on. Still, when I started as Tobacco Control’s editor-in-chief more than a dozen years ago, I agonised over every single decision. I tried to always personalise the rejection letter and still do (we work from a form letter, given our volume of submissions) but I know from personal experience how deflating it can be to get those emails. Determining what to reject outright, what to send out to review and what to reject after review is still sometimes excruciating for me, but since our senior editorial team meets...
Source: Tobacco Control - Category: Respiratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Editorial Source Type: research