Wednesday, November 4, 2009

How do deal with rejection

Post Doc Mentor (PDM) and I submitted an abstract based on a manuscript we have in progress for a special issue of a sub-field journal. Basically the process was send and abstract, we'll review them and then pick our favorites to submit a full manuscript to be peer reviewed.

It was my idea to submit and PDM told me that they believed we were underselling the paper but that it was a good way to kick us into gear in finishing the paper so we submitted.

As it turns out they rejected us. It was a nice rejection letter, they got way more abstracts than they expected and encouraged us to send our work to this journal or another journal as they thought it was worthy of publication. I sent PDM the rejection letter saying bummer, we should submit to the other journal they thought was better suited for us.

PDM's response:

we should be relieved -- (name of journal we submitted to) sucks. it is always better to
spend the time getting the paper into a good journal that people actually read.

I was laughing my ass off when I read PDM's response. I should mention that PDM is extremely successful, amazing publication record, ivy league job, very well known and liked in our field so they kinda know what they're talking about. :)

I almost wanted to send PDM's response back to the Special Issue editor. LOL

1 comment:

Albatross said...

It is like the science version of the tabloids 'stars- just like us' features =) PDM sounds cool!