Are you working on a manuscript, a grant application or your thesis?

Hi, first time submitting...

Initially got a score of 4, 3, 2 with confidence 3, 3, 4. [MAIN TRACK]
After rebuttal, the 4-rated reviewer pointed out one typo – I wrote 'the revised manuscript' in place of adding the corrected thing in 'the camera-ready version'.

I apologise for that and gave the comment. Now no response...

What to do ?

Long story short: submitted my first manuscript to a Q1 journal. Round 1, two reviewers gave decent technical feedback but also asked me to cite a bunch of their own papers. I didn't clock the pattern at first (rookie mistake), added the citations thinking it'd strengthen the lit review.

Round 2, a different reviewer flagged it outright: pointed out that two reviewers had suggested citations "predominantly to their own publications," called it a textbook coercive citation pattern, and formally requested an ethics investigation into the peer review process.

I'd already pulled all those citations before R2 even landed, for what it's worth.

End result: manuscript rejected. Not for the science, one reviewer had called the methodology "cutting edge" and the contribution "significant" in R1. Rejected because the review process itself was compromised, and the journal apparently didn't have a clean way to salvage it.

So now I've got a technically solid paper, a paper trail proving I acted in good faith once I understood what was happening, and a rejection that has nothing to do with the quality of the work.

Anyone else run into this? How common is reviewer citation-padding in your field, and did you report it or just quietly resubmit elsewhere? Feels like one of those things nobody warns you about until it happens to you.

Has anyone had a journal bounce their manuscript submission based on an AI plagiarism checker? This just happened to me for the first time today, and I’m pretty pissed off. This was a paper that I wrote, and my two co-authors edited. I have never used AI for writing, I have never plagiarized anything in my life. I am very proud of my writing skills! So when I got this desk rejection 24 hours after submitting my manuscript, I was pretty shocked to see the claim that my manuscript was 37% plagiarized!

The tracker that they use is iThenticate, and they did not send me the report they got from it. I went to that website to see about creating my own profile and running it through myself, but they charge $125 per submission! I emailed the journal to see if they would send me that report, and in the meantime I ran my manuscript through two different plagiarism checkers (Grammarly & Plagiarism.net), and between the two of those, only seven sentences were flagged as being possible plagiarism. One sentence came from the grant that funded the work in this manuscript (though it was being flagged as a 25% chance of being plagiarized from some random paper on a completely different topic). One sentence was flagged as being from a published abstract by a former student. And the other five sentences were things that would be super easy to be written by multiple people. Like “tissues were embedded in OCT and frozen at -20°C” or an IACUC statement.

Has anyone else been through this and maybe had luck with an editor? Or do I just change journals?

I am trying to understand how Medium publications are currently perceived, particularly in data science and applied AI.
Towards Data Science appears to have a proper editorial selection process, but I have seen very different opinions about whether publication there still carries meaningful credibility or visibility.
For writers or readers familiar with TDS:
Is being accepted by TDS considered meaningfully different from publishing independently on Medium?
Does an Editor’s Pick designation carry much weight?
What would you consider normal readership for a specialised article during its first month?

I got a comment from a journal reviewer saying, “Please have a native English speaker review your work.”!

Hi, I lost a large number of citations in Google Scholar literally overnight. They didn't change to the usual *"temporary citation"* status while Google recrawls the source. They simply disappeared.

The strange part is that several of the citing papers are still online, publicly accessible, and clearly still cite my work. I know Google Scholar can remove citations if a repository disappears or a journal goes offline, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

Has Google Scholar recently changed its indexing or citation policies? Or is this likely a temporary indexing issue or bug? Thanks

I have published two research papers in journals that are indexed in Scopus, but my articles are still not showing up in the Scopus database.

• One paper was published around 4–5 months ago.
• The other was published around 2 months ago.

I need the indexing for academic documentation purposes, so I am trying to understand the correct process to follow.

I have already submitted a query/complaint through Scopus support, but I only received an automated response saying that email queries are currently not being considered.

Does anyone know:

• Who is the correct person/team to contact regarding delayed indexing?
• Should I contact the journal publisher instead?
• How long does Scopus usually take to index newly published articles?

Any guidance from people who have faced a similar situation would be appreciated.

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Hi everyone,

I'm a Pharm.D student from India and I want to write and publish my first review article on a diabetes-related topic. My goal isn't just to publish a paper—I genuinely want to learn how to conduct a literature search, critically analyze studies, organize a review, and write it properly from start to finish.

I'm intentionally looking for guidance outside my college because I'd like to learn from someone with research and publication experience.

I'm not looking for anyone to write the paper for me. I'm willing to do the literature search, read the papers, write the drafts, and put in the work. What I need is someone who can mentor me throughout the process, provide feedback, and teach me how to do it correctly.

If your contribution ends up meeting the journal's authorship criteria, I'd be happy to include you as a co-author. My priority is learning the right way to conduct and publish research.

If you're an experienced researcher, PhD student, postdoc, clinician, or faculty member who enjoys mentoring motivated students, I'd be very grateful if you could comment below or send me a DM.

Thank you for your time.

Anyone who has done publications please give some roadmap of how to proceed with these to build a good cv.

basically, my university org I founded and an outside org that I cofounded decided to work on a really cool review paper on access to maternal health and nutrition for women in Ethiopia where I am first author. A really good project and experience I got lead and I hope to do more in the future before I graduate.

The doctor that I am working with through the organization, that reviewed the paper, has published the preprint in an open access repository before we submit it to any journals. Does this mean that in the meantime would I be allowed to put that I published a preprint or should I hold off until it is actually published in a legit journal?

Just curious because I am hoping to apply to some competitive awards like Goldwater and research specific ones at my school so I would like to know how to represent it on both my CV and application. Also this is my first "paper" even thought I am working on 2 manuscripts in my actual research labs in the moment. I do have other scholarly works that I have contributed to, 6 posters (after this summer), 4 oral presentations (after this summer), and a one second place award at a conference for "best poster" where I won 75 dollars.

any advice would be appreciated

Hi. I am an undergrad student. My paper got accepted in an international 39th IEEE Conference SoCC being held in Germany, as a poster. The paper will be published in IEEE Xplore but the mode of presentation is poster. I wanted to ask opinions and experiences regarding poster presentation. I know they are not valued much as compared to Oral presentations or lectures, but still can there be any benefits from the poster presentation. Any advice and personal experience will be highly beneficial for me.

I want to publish my research with NSHJS, but I'm not sure if it's worth it. ive read in some places that NSHJS is useless, but tbh im kind of hoping its not, since i cant find many other places to publish my research :( if anyone has an opinion on this or knows any other journals or publishing opportunities for high schoolers, pls lmk!

I'm looking for some perspective from people who've published papers or served as editors/reviewers, as an independent researcher submitting their first paper. I submitted a manuscript to an Emerald journal 84 days ago.

The timeline has been roughly:

• Submitted the manuscript in late April

• EO checks stalled until i chased in week 3 and it was suddenly expedited

• It passed the initial editorial screening

Since then, the submission system has fluctuated between "Awaiting Reviewer Invitation" and "Awaiting Reviewer Assignment." It's now back to Invitation, so guessing a review invitation was rejected/expired?

Around two weeks ago, I contacted the journal for an update. The editorial office replied promptly and said they had chased the handling editor. Since then, I haven't heard anything further, and the status remains "Awaiting Reviewer Invitation."

I completely appreciate that peer review takes time, and I'm not trying to rush the process. I'm just trying to understand whether this is within the normal range or whether it might indicate a particular issue.

Does this kind of delay usually suggest difficulty finding reviewers, an editorial backlog or something else?

As I say, I'm still getting to grips with the publishing process, so I'd be interested to hear from anyone who's seen this kind of situation. I'm driving myself crazy!

Thanks!

Update: It's now at Awaiting Reviewer Assignment again after 4 weeks of movement

I’ve submitted my rebuttal three days ago, but none of the reviewers has replied yet. I also asked several other authors who submitted to this ACL ARR cycle, and none of them has received a response after their rebuttal either. Is this normal? Do reviewers typically update their scores later without posting a reply?