Set I: Reasons reviewers reject and accept manuscripts
- Inappropriate or incomplete statistics
- Over-interpretation of results
- Inappropriate or sub-optimal instrumentation
- Sample too small or biased
- Text difficult to follow
- Insufficient problem statement
- Inaccurate or inconsistent data reported
- Incomplete, inaccurate, or outdated review of the literature
- Insufficient data presented
- Defective tables or figures
Adapted from: Bordage, G. (2001). Reasons reviewers reject and accept manuscripts: the strengths and weakness in medical education reports. Academic Medicine, vol. 76(9): 889-896
Set II: Publishing your medical research paper
1. Importance of the topic
- Rehash of established facts
- Insignificant research question
- Irrelevant or unimportant topic
- Low reader interest
- Little clinical relevance
- Not generalizable
2. Study Design
- Poor experimental design
- Vague/inadequate method description
- Methods lack sufficient rigor
- Failure to account for confounders
- No control or improper control
- No hypothesis
- Biased protocol
- Small sample size
- Inappropriate statistical methods, or statistics not applied properly
3. Overall Presentation of Study and Findings
- Poor organization
- Too long or verbose
- Failure to communicate clearly
- Poor grammar, syntax or spelling
- Excessively self-promotional
- Poorly written abstract
4. Interpretation of the Findings
- Erroneous or unsupported conclusions
- Conclusions disproportionate to results
- Study design does not support inferences made
- Inadequate link of findings to practice
- Uncritical acceptance of statistical results
- Failure to consider alternative explanations
- Unexplained inconsistencies
- Inflation of the importance of the findings
- Interpretation not concordant with the data
- Inadequate discussion
Adapted from Byrne, DW. (1998). Publishing your medical research paper. What they don’t teach you in medical school. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Set III: The top 10 reasons why manuscripts are not accepted for publication
- Picking the wrong journal
- Submitting a manuscript in a format that does not match what the journal published
- Not following the manuscript preparation instructions
- Poor writing
- Getting carried away in the discussion
- Sub-optimal reporting of the methods
- Inadequate description of the methods
- Poor study design
- Failure to revise and resubmit following peer review
- Failure to write and submit a full manuscript after presenting the abstract
From Pierson, D. J. (2004). The top 10 reasons why manuscripts are not accepted for publication. Respiratory Care, 49(10): 1246-1252.
Last Updated: Oct 2, 2020 11:20 AM
URL: https://libguides.umn.edu/c.php?g=986746