What does the submission and review process for a scientific paper look like?

"Writing and publishing" are of central importance in science: As a rule, papers appear in a scientific journal, in conference proceedings, in collective works, or in festschrifts. The submission processes are comparable. The process is generally as follows:

Selection of the topic and the survey of the time until publication

Selection of the target journal, the target group, and possible co-authors

Conducting a literature review and writing the theory section

Obtaining feedback from the supervisor

Documenting the empirical research and methodology

Undertaking a pre-review, e.g., in conferences or with student friends

Implementation of changes

Editing

Transfer of the paper to the journal

Initiation of the review process

Decision of the journal on acceptance or rejection

If accepted: incorporation of the reviewer's change requests (possibly a multi-stage process) in dialog with the reviewer

Publication

If you follow these steps you will get a good scientific paper in a few steps! Please note, however, that the rejection rate in the first step is high.

About 30 percent of all submissions are rejected immediately and do not even reach the review process. That’s why it’s a good decision to use a writing service sometimes. If you can’t choose a good one, read this review of edubirdie.

 The acceptance rate at journals or papers that are then published is only about 1 percent, but these rates vary greatly from journal to journal. How it looks, for example, in the journals for which Elsevier is responsible, can be seen in the following figure.

Related Resources:

What does a good outline look like?

How to do proper literature research? 

Scientific work: The most important points

Taboo words in scientific papers