Q: What will happen if I make a mistake in the references format in the revised manuscript?

Detailed Question -

I submitted my manuscript to a Springer journal. I got a decision for major revision the first time, after which the manuscript went for review. Five days ago, I received a minor revision decision, stating that the manuscript can be accepted after changing the reference format as per the journal guidelines. I accordingly made the change and submitted the revised article. However, after resubmission, the reference checking results (enabled by eXstyles) show that five articles are not validated and 13 are not linked, but the remaining 150 articles (thereabouts) are validated. What is meant by not validated? Out of the five unvalidated journals, two are non-Scopus.

1 Answer to this question
Answer:

Thanks for the details. It seems the issue is not with the reference style, but rather with the invalidation of the references.

So, what happens here is that the journal’s submission system automatically tries to cross-reference the cited references in the manuscript with a reference database such as PubMed or CrossRef in order to check the accuracy of the references and link them for ease of typesetting. In cases where references that are not indexed in these databases (for example, the ones that are not published In English) are present in the submitted manuscript, the system is unable to locate them in the database, and so, the result appears as ‘non-validated.’

However, you needn’t worry about this as there is no issue with the resubmission. In case the journal needs additional details regarding the non-validated/unvalidated references, they will reach out to you to provide it during the typesetting stage (which is the next stage from their perspective).

For now, a pre-congrats of sorts for the almost-acceptance. :-) For the next stage from your perspective, proofing, you may begin preparing yourself by going through the following resources:

Also, for future submissions, it may help to know about R Pubsure, an AI-powered manuscript assessment tool from one of our sister brands. R Pubsure performs various checks on your ready manuscript to enable it to become submission-ready – from language checks to authorship checks to reference checks. This helps make your manuscript complete for submission, thus helping you minimize or even avoid the possibility of desk rejection. You may learn more about the tool here: R Pubsure (and view a sample reference check here).

Hope that helps. All the best in taking your manuscript toward acceptance and publication!

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