Since June 2015, we have received about 30 000 submissions. We have enjoyed many of them, but we also have learned quite a bit about our prospective authors’ submission approaches.
Here is how our review process is organized: All submissions are first triaged by the editor-in-chief and the senior deputy editor. Out of 100 new submissions, 33% are internally “desk rejected” (i.e., without further review), sometimes without being deeply read, because their content is not appropriate for this journal. This has nothing to do with their quality. If their content is appropriate, some common causes of desk rejection are outdated data (e.g., data collection completed > 3 years before [which is too old for AJPH]); analysis of surveys not based on the latest data release; results of primarily etiological interest; pilot, feasibility, formative or process evaluation, or validation studies; lack of a comparison or control group; low survey response rate(s); small samples; case studies; and convenience samples. Of the 67% left, another half are desk rejected because they are deemed to be of low priority in terms of novelty or mainly of local interest—the Journal favoring national data when it comes to surveys and surveillance.
The 33% of submissions retained beyond the triage stage are forwarded to the deputy editor, who decides whether to assign them to an associate editor. A substantial number of rejections “without reviews” occur at this stage. Beyond it, the papers either will be rejected “after review” or published.
These statistics are for all submissions, including Opinion Pieces and Notes From the Field. If we focus specifically on Research Articles, Brief Research Articles, Analytic Essays, and Public Health Then and Now history manuscripts, which are strictly externally peer-reviewed, a simple way to put it is that 90% are rejected without review. We are very selective but make a huge effort to process these articles quickly. Five percent will be rejected after review, and 5% will be published. Both outcomes should be considered as successful, because the external reviews mean that peers have been working on your paper, and their comments may help you in publishing the paper elsewhere. The problem is the 90% of desk rejections, which involve a large loss of time and are a source of unwarranted frustration.
These desk rejections can be dramatically reduced if one reads the Instructions for Authors carefully and familiarizes oneself with the mission of AJPH by perusing its tables of contents over a few months and reading the most relevant articles. Explaining in the cover letter what the paper adds to what the Journal has already published is also useful. At triage, we are not necessarily aware of the whole literature, but we are aware of what we have published.
Targeting the submission to a journal that is expecting similar articles may be time consuming, but it is worth allocating sufficient time to this search given that getting funded, conducting the research, and preparing the paper may have taken years.
As a bottom line, desk-rejected articles are as frustrating for us as they are for you. A useful objective is to carefully target a journal in order primarily not to be desk rejected because, again, having external reviews increases the chances of an article being published quickly and well, whereas a desk rejection just leaves the same paper older.
We feel that the knowledge we have today after triaging 30 000 submissions would have been useful when we were researchers aspiring to publish, but, hopefully, these comments may be of great interest for young researchers or researchers coming from institutions where specific training about how to publish quickly and well is neglected.
Alfredo Morabia, MD, PhD
Editor-in-Chief
AJPH
Michael C. Costanza, PhD
Senior Deputy Editor
AJPH
55. Years Ago
Abortion Law: The Approaches of Different Nations
In the United States, the estimated one to one and a half million criminal abortions that occur each year cause much more extensive damage than the few hundred recorded deaths would indicate. It is estimated that 350,000 women a year suffer postoperative complications from abortion. . . . The difficulty in coping with this disastrous situation is that abortion is not solely a medical problem. . . . In those jurisdictions in which the law makes it a crime to perform an abortion except to save the life of the woman, the physician’s hands are tied. . . . The stringency of such laws drives women to self-inflicted abortions, to abortions performed by unqualified persons, and to abortions performed by qualified persons under improper conditions. . . . Periodic repression of “abortion rings” and prosecution of individual physicians, however, have failed utterly to halt the resort of desperate women (the majority of whom are married) to criminal abortionists. . . . As the history of prohibition indicates, a law which attempts to legislate morals and which does not have the support of the people is unenforceable.
From AJPH, November 1967, pp. 1906–1907
82. Years Ago
Public Health and the Law
Practitioners of public health should bear in mind that the police power under which they conduct their functions is broad in scope, is usually construed liberally by the courts, and always gives them ample authority for their operations, but they must also remember that there are limitations upon the police power imposed by constitutions and the common law. Under our form of government, citizens have certain inalienable rights which the courts are zealous to safeguard.
From AJPH, June 1941, p. 591
Biography
