Rejection checklist

About half of the papers we receive are rejected by one or more LJPC editors. We send authors this checklist:

We receive many more papers than we can publish. This means that we have to reject most of them without external peer review, usually for a combination of the reasons listed below. An editor who has read your paper has ticked those that we believe apply most closely to your paper. Wherever possible we also give some reasons why we liked your paper. We are sorry that we have not been able to write you a personal letter, but we hope that you will find this checklist helpful. Please contact us if you feel we have been unfair in our judgment.

Why we liked your paper:

• it covers an important subject
• the message is original
• it is relevant to general readers
• we were impressed by the careful methods
• some of the material is fascinating
• it is well presented
• it is an interesting read
• it covers a topical subject
• it covers a neglected area

Why did we reject your paper?

INTEREST, ORIGINALITY, AND IMPORTANCE

• on balance, your paper is not sufficiently interesting for general readers (relative to other papers)
• the message is not new enough
• the topic is interesting but the paper does not cover it in enough depth
• the paper adds a small amount of new information but not enough to warrant space in the ILJPC
• the message is not useful enough in practice
• the message is too complex for general readers
• the message is too narrow for general readers
• the result is too unsurprising to interest and educate general readers
• the effect is small; we are not confident of the validity of the message
• the main message is weakened because it depends on a subgroup analysis
• the topic has not been covered before in the LJPC, and we doubt that it would interest our readers enough
• you have studied a highly selected sample; the findings are difficult to generalise to other groups
• the message is too narrow for our international readership

CLINICAL USEFULNESS

• the message is not useful enough to clinical practice or public health
• the paper deals with a rare condition
• this lesson of the week is not sufficiently useful

METHODS

• the research question is not stated clearly
• the methods are not described clearly enough
• we feel that your study did not use the best methods to answer the research question
• we are worried about methodological weaknesses such as confounding, bias, or insufficient statistical power
• the response rate was too low; there may be non-response bias
• we think you used the wrong control group
• you used an unvalidated research instrument
• your search for evidence did not use an acceptable strategy
• you pooled studies that were too heterogeneous
• the paper is not sufficiently evidence based
• your conclusions may not be justified by the data presented
• the study is too small

YOUR PAPER IS OF A TYPE WE DO NOT GENERALLY PUBLISH (because of design weaknesses or lack of relevance/importance to general readers)

• untested hypotheses
• pure laboratory based research
• animal research
• physiological or pharmacological studies on normal volunteers
• clinical studies using volunteers eg people recruited through advertisements
• case reports (unless presented as lesson of the week or drug point)
• case series with no (or inadequate) control group
• retrospective studies using casenotes, charts, and other routinely collected records
• non-randomised comparisons
• intervention studies with no control group
• papers describing interventions and initiatives without evaluating them
• simple prevalence studies
• cost of illness studies
• surveys of self-reported practice, rather than observed practice
• simple ("open loop") audits without intervention and reaudit
• predictive models which have not been retested in a second population
• clinical guidelines based on expert opinion rather than evidence
• we do not think this work is suitable for publication as a paper, but we hope you will send a summary of it as rapid response