The email arrives, you read the first line and there is no need to go on: “we regret to inform you”. This time, unlike a desk rejection, there are reports. Two or three reviewers have read your whole manuscript and written pages. It hurts more, and it is normal that it does, but those reports are the most valuable material you have received in the entire process.
The most common and most expensive reaction is to send the same file to another journal that same week, with the reference format changed. It is a reliable way to get the same comments back in three months. What helps is something else, and it fits into two weeks: read, sort, decide what gets fixed, and choose the next journal with a clear head.
This guide gives you an order of work for that time: how to read the letter, how to separate the comments that carry the rejection from those that are opinion, when appealing makes sense, what to change before you resubmit, and how not to hand the next journal the same reasons.
The first reading of a rejection report is a defensive reading: you see the tone, the adjectives, what feels unfair. It is a poor basis for any decision. Save the email, do not reply to the editor and do not touch the manuscript for a couple of days. If you have co-authors, forward them the reports and ask them to read before you speak: a second reading without the emotional hit picks up things yours will not.
After the two days, read the reports again, but with a task: not to judge them, to sort them. You are extracting information, not arguing with the author of each comment. That shift in attitude separates the person who publishes the paper on the second attempt from the one who sends it out five times unchanged.
Before sorting comments, identify exactly what you were told, because “rejected” covers very different situations and letters are not always clear about it.
Make a sheet with three columns and put each comment in one. It is an afternoon’s exercise that changes the action plan completely.
These are the comments that, if true, undermine a conclusion or the design: a sample too small for the analysis you run, an analysis that does not answer the question, a cross-sectional design with causal conclusions, an instrument with no validity evidence in your population. If two reviewers agree on one, it is almost certainly here. These points are not fixed with a sentence: you have to reanalyse, reframe or state a limitation explicitly. They are the ones you are most likely to meet again at another journal.
What is poorly explained, poorly reported or poorly presented: an effect size is missing, the sample size is not justified, the discussion claims more than the data show, references are incomplete. It is solved with work, sometimes a few hours of analysis, and improves the paper whichever journal it ends up in. Most comments in a first round fall here.
Style preferences, suggestions to cite the reviewer’s own work, comments that contradict another reviewer, requests that change the aim of the study. You can take them if they convince you and you can leave them. What matters is that they do not eat the week you should spend on column 1. A manuscript rejected for column 1 is not saved by polishing column 3.
Almost every journal allows an appeal, and almost every journal rejects almost all it receives. It makes sense only when the rejection rests on an objective error you can demonstrate: a reviewer attributing to the paper something it does not say, an analysis understood backwards, an evident conflict of interest, an editor who misclassified the study type. In those cases a short letter, without adjectives, with the evidence, is reasonable.
It makes no sense when the disagreement is one of judgement: the reviewer finds the contribution insufficient, prefers another analysis, is not persuaded by your framing. That is what reviewers do, and an appeal does not change it. The two weeks you would spend arguing are better spent strengthening the manuscript.
The practical rule is simple: any column 1 or column 2 comment that a reviewer at another journal could make again should be resolved before you resubmit. The scientific community is smaller than it looks, and it is not unusual for the same reviewer to receive your paper at the next journal. If you changed something, let it show; if you decided not to change something, have the reason written down.
After fixing what matters, review what changes when you resubmit:
The reports give you something you did not have when you chose the first journal: a measure of how demanding your topic is. If the column 1 comments were strong, do not go up a quartile; consider a step down or a journal closer to your design. If almost all were column 2, the manuscript can aim at a similar level once corrected.
To choose well, look at each candidate’s recent issues and check that it has published work with your design, your kind of sample and your kind of question. And verify it is in a recognised index: a rejection is recoverable, publishing in a predatory journal is not. Our guide to the pre-submission checklist covers what editors look at for fit.
As long as it takes to fix what matters, and not less than a week. Resubmitting the same file the next day only changes the journal’s logo and brings you back to the same comments. If the rejection was for fit and the reports were favourable, you can resubmit sooner, with the cover letter and format adapted.
There is no obligation to say so unless the submission system asks or it is a transfer within the same publishing group. What is mandatory is not having the manuscript under review at two journals at once. While you wait for a decision, it does not go anywhere else.
You can and should use them as a work guide, but the reports belong to the journal and are not attached when you submit elsewhere, except in internal transfers within a publishing group. Use what they say to improve the manuscript, and do not quote or reproduce them.
Look at which of the two points affects a conclusion or the design: that one weighs more. If the contradiction is about style or preference, pick what suits the paper and decide with judgement. When you resubmit elsewhere, what matters is that what stays in the text has a reason you can explain.
There is no shared register between journals. Each publisher sees only its own history, so a rejection at one journal does not affect your chances at another. The only thing that carries over is what you decide to learn from the reports.
If the comment is in column 1, almost always yes: it is what will come back at the next journal. If the requested analysis changes the aim of the study or is the reviewer’s preference, there is no need. What decides is whether the comment could be repeated and whether it improves the paper whichever journal it goes to.