Do you get sick of constant rejection of your manuscripts? We make academic setbacks and our strategic wins at Fast Publications. Our consultancy offers professional advice to the researchers who have to work with complicated editorial systems.
We provide the full Resubmission support so that your work will find the right new home in the shortest amount of time. Be it a revise and resubmit, or a transfer offer, our professionals save your academic face. Collaborate with us and simplify your process and work on your research.
Dilemma of Transfer Desks: Accepting a Journal of Lower Tier?
The email notification rings. You open it to be told in a soft rejection by one of the best journals. The editor admires your approaches and says that the discoveries do not have the general appeal they need in their crown publication. Nonetheless, they provide them with a lifeline: an automatic transfer to a sibling journal.
This poses a dilemma for the Transfer Desk. Do you take the “low-level” position or risk going elsewhere? Such a choice affects your career path and reference rates. There must be a trade off between pragmatism and ambition in deciding. Seeing this crossroad, you can easily get through it with the appropriate Resubmission support.
What Is the Transfer Desk?
Some of the leading publishers such as Springer Nature or Elsevier sell manuscripts and peer-review reports to other journals within their collection using transfer desks. This is used by the editors to store the good research which does not fit in their area of interest.
Although it seems to be a sob story, it plays a crucial role. It lessens the pressure on peer reviewers and accelerates publication. Acceptance, however, normally involves a demotion to a lower Impact Factor journal. You have to make up your mind whether it is better to be convenient or prestigious.
The Case of the Acceptance of the Transfer
The first advantage is speed. In accepting you generally overlook the first screening at the new journal. More often than not, the new editor takes the comments of previous reviewers and months of waiting are done away with. This speed is priceless in case you have a strict deadline on a grant or graduation.
Acceptance also eliminates the pain of reformatting. All the journals have boring “Instructions to authors.” It takes hours to reform a manuscript to a new publisher. A transfer preserves your formatting in the same ecosystem, which is a tremendous amount of work saved.
Moreover, there is an increase in the number of journals on the lower tier that are up-and-comers. A niche journal may be less impactful in the general sense, but more prestigious in your specialty. There is a tendency to be cited more by experts who actually develop your work when you are a big fish in a pond of specialists.
The Case for Declining
Do not hit the Accept button because you are frustrated. Other transfers result in so-called mega-journals that have high Article Processing Charges (APCs). In case you do not have a large budget, you may not be able to afford an expensive Open Access transfer. Never forget to check the fee structure.
The issue of prestige is still present. When you are writing a research paper on a Tier 3 journal, then you are likely to undermine your work by publishing in a top-10% journal. Had the rejection been on the grounds of “fit” as opposed to the quality, you may succeed in a competing flagship. It is at this point that professional Resubmission support is very important to offer an objective second opinion.
How to Evaluate the Offer
There are three questions to be asked before making a decision. To start with, does the new journal reach your target audience? In case the transfer shifts you to a niche journal, will it reach the right people? The masthead brand is not always as important as visibility.
Second, what is the reputation of the proposed journal? Determine whether significant databases such as Scopus have it. The low-quality journals are to be avoided, as they are just to earn money. Make sure that the journal publishes reputable work.
Third, what were the initial reviewers? In case the reviewers were in love with your work and the editor considered that it was too distant, the transfer is a good choice. In case of reviewers discovering the root causes of the problems, transfer will not help to resolve the inherent issue. Resubmission support should come first to rewrite the paper and then go elsewhere.
The “Rebound” Strategy
If you decline, you need a plan. Do not just present the same paper to some other high-impact journal. Work based on the criticism of the initial rejection.
Researchers who succeed apply the transfer offer as a reference. In case a Tier 1 journal recommends Tier 3, they may do so independently to a Tier 2 journal. This intermediate position strategy does not lose the prestige but admits that the top-tier maybe beyond the scope of this particular study.
How Fast Publications Can Be of Assistance
It is a stressful task to make such decisions individually. Fast Publications Resubmission support team provides you with strategic support. We evaluate transfer offers against your long term objectives. We look at trends in Impact Factor and demographics in the audience so that the move is sensible.
In case you refuse, we assist you to select the second best target. We analyze comments of the reviewers so that your further submission will be bulletproof. We convert the guesswork to the process so that you do not get less than your research is worth.
Conclusion
A transfer offer is not a failure, but a strategic decision. Accepting will save time and energy, but will need to be questioned. It takes the guts and a strategy to say, no. With help of professional Resubmission assistance, you will transform a dilemma into a reasoned step to success. Never let a rejection hinder you. Take advantage of all feedback to increase your power.
Get an offer of transfer at the moment?
Split-second decisions are not to be made. Get in touch with Contact Fast Publications. Our group offers professional Resubmission services that you require to make the most appropriate decision concerning your manuscript.
