This week, I had to eat my own dog food. Last week, I posted about what I learned from having papers rejected. The next day, a rejection decision arrived, evoking a torrent of emotions.
The first indicator was a text message from my coauthor, "have you checked your email?"
The second indicator was in the email from the editor, "while we like your topic ...
The third indicator was the four or five emails within the team about the next steps, "we need to ..."
While it is easy to say learn from rejection, it is not easy to process the emotions connected to receiving one. Even when I recognize that the review panel's comments are on point, I always wish I had been given an opportunity to improve my work.
So how did I respond? & how do I suggest young faculty respond to rejection?
First, mourn.
Whether it is your first submission or the 100th submission, rejections sting.
Often, I have to set aside thought work for the day & focus on more mechanistic tasks.
Sometimes, I lay awake at night & think about what went wrong or what I could do better.
Take some time to process the emotion. It's ok to feel bad. It's human.
Second, you need to recognize that rejection hurts collaborators for different reasons.
For young scholars, they may feel fear about future job or advancement opportunities.
For senior scholars, they may worry about becoming dated or having have let down a protege.
Be attentive to your coauthors' feelings & concerns because it's the decent thing to do & because it will shed insight on their motivation to work on the next iteration of the paper.
Third, you need to process the emotions to move forward.
Most review packages will have statements that discourage you. You will read them & feel angry because the review panel missed something, disappointed because the reviewer got something wrong, or incredulous because the reviewer disagreed with your ironclad logic.
It is tough to revise a paper if you are angry, disappointed, or incredulous about the feedback.
If you operate in a fog of emotions, you will fail to see the opportunities to improve the paper (even if you remain convinced the feedback is wrong).
Take a walk. Take a day or a week off from the project. Let the fog go.
Fourth, you must commit yourself to a timeline to get back to work on a paper.
When I was younger, I let rejected papers sit for months. Sometimes, my ideas sat so long that others published closely related concepts. Other times, my author teams lost interest in working on the project. It often took a coauthor prodding me to get back to work.
It does not help to let a paper sit too long. So after a week or so, sit down & timeline out when you plan to get back to work.
Plan a call with coauthors, draft a response plan, & decide what to do next.
With this recent rejection, I'm not quite there yet. But I will be.
I will schedule a call this week. It's time to get back to work.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jason-thatcher-0329764_on-how-i-handle-a-paper-reject-decision-activity-6893601930241810432-r4zs?utm_source=linkedin_share&utm_medium=member_desktop_web
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