Trying to get published after a second rejection is heart-breaking

In research, we constantly deal with rejection. We need to have the recognition from our peers in such a way that our contribution to the scientific community can be considered as one of value. However, it can turn into a long process and be quite painful.

One of my papers has been recently rejected for the second time and it hit me badly. My story starts in 2016 when I presented a piece of my work in October (which I had started by the end of 2015) at an international conference. I got good feedback that allowed me to develop it a bit more into a paper worthy of journal publication. I sent the first version to my supervisor in December but he didn’t read it until April, the next year and, as a consequence, I couldn’t submit it to an international journal until later in May. Six months later, in November 2017, I got rejected. I sent the modified paper according to the reviewer’s comments to my supervisor to prepare it for a second submission a month later. But it wasn’t easy because he didn’t have any interest and we had constant disagreements about its submission. In February 2018, I went ahead and I submitted it to another international journal but, in June I got rejected again after 5 months of waiting.

According to the reviewers from the last rejection:

The need for [..] (which is actually an existing gap in the knowledge area) is not correctly addressed in this paper. While the topic is one of interest, it is not clear what the value of this paper is.

No alternatives or suggestions were provided and the feedback was very vague as in the last comment I showed. Plus, only 2 out of 3 reviewers gave their comments.

I feel like I’m constantly hitting myself on a wall because everyone recognizes the gap but nobody is able to tell me why I am not right or what I should do to make it better. I developed this piece of work in 2015 and over two and a half years later, I’m still waiting for it to be published. Technology develops very fast and my work is stuck in 2015. How can PhDs get their degrees with peer-reviewed publications if it takes the reviewers that long to give feedback? I won’t have any other choice than to leave it aside and keep going forward with other parts of my research, while looking to publish.

I have also been a reviewer and I know that it takes some time to give productive feedback; but what I found from the last comments was nothing more than three lines with insufficient feedback for which I waited half a year. Besides, I asked the editor for certain clarifications and I am still waiting. I have a feeling that I might have to wait a few months to hear back from them.

I actually don’t know how I feel about it. Am I disappointed? Sad? Discouraged? Mad? The only thing I feel is that waiting half a year for a rejection is not fair to any PhD student since we are under the pressure to publish, and those months are very valuable to us.

Oihane Cereceda is a PhD student in Engineering. This story was published on June 4, 2018, on Oihane’s blog, My story in a blog (available here), and has been republished here with permission.