 Now let's talk a little bit about why papers get rejected. There are some common reasons and I hope you can avoid rejection if you follow these suggestions. First of all, a paper may be rejected if it's poorly written and that often means that the ideas are not well organized, not clearly written. For that type of rejection it sounds like you might need help in revising your paper before you would submit to another journal. One of the most common reasons for the rejection in the journal that I currently edit, the Journal of Professional Nursing, is that the topic is a mismatch for the journal. For example, the Journal of Professional Nursing is the journal sponsored by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. The purpose of the journal is to discuss issues related to nursing education, baccalaureate and graduate education in nursing. The journal is intended to talk about educational research to publish papers on academic service partnerships, educational policies. So when I get a paper, for instance, I've gotten papers on care of the patient with gang green. I received a paper on ischemia in rats. I've gotten paper on care of the patient after cardiac bypass grafting surgery, care of the diabetic patient. These may be the best papers ever written on these topics but they're a complete mismatch for the journal. Those papers are rejected without really even being read because right from the start they're a mismatch for the purpose of the journal. So for my journal, the most common reason for rejection is the topic is inappropriate for the journal. Another common reason for rejection is that the paper's not written at a level appropriate for the target audience of that journal. If your target audience is nurse practitioners then you wouldn't write with a slant of a staff nurse. If your target audience are nurse managers then you must write for that level audience with an assumption of what they already know and don't know about the topic. So it's so important that you have that right match for the journal and for the audience. Another reason for rejection is that your paper offers very little new information. You've merely summarized what's already known on the topic. There's nothing new for the reader. So think about your paper as you write it. Are you writing a new information, a new slant, a new twist, a new way to solve that problem? That's what we're looking for. For example, I recently received a paper saying that wouldn't it be great if in schools of nursing we integrated simulation into our curricula? Yes it is a great idea but we've been doing that now for about 20 years. So a paper that says to us as educators, wow it's time to integrate simulation in your curriculum is about 20 years too late. So that's an example could be a well-written paper but it's not offering us a new idea. For a research paper a common reason for rejection is that the research method or the statistics used are flawed. Now those kind of papers are very difficult to fix because if you've completed a study that used the wrong research method or you did all your data analysis with the wrong statistical technique it's going to take a heck of a lot of work to fix that paper and for some they may not be salvageable. So in my experience as an editor with the support of reviewers I've had to reject papers because the underlying method that was used was flawed. Another reason for rejection is you did not follow the author guidelines. For example if it says that we only accept papers that are a minimum of 10 pages and you submit a two type page paper it won't be considered and I have gotten some student papers that were only three type pages and that's really not exploring a topic in the depth that's needed for a journal. So it's so important to follow the author guidelines otherwise you are putting yourself at risk for a rejection. So the next step now that you have your comments back you've worked hard on revising the paper you've got to again avoid that writer's block because sometimes you're a bit immobilized by the comments of the reviewers they seem overwhelming and unfortunately many of us have the mindset that we had when we wrote turnpapers. When you turned it in it was over whether you got a great grade or a bad grade it was over it's not over in journal writing. You'll need to get that head of steam up to do the revisions. So do all the techniques you did in your first draft to overcome writer's block and work on those revisions. Revise as requested be sure to carefully follow look over the paper again did you address all the substantive comments of the reviewers and be sure to follow the editor's directions as well if they gave you any tips on how to revise and make your revise draft.