Soil Biology and Biochemistry 146 (2020) 107823
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Soil Biology and Biochemistry
journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/soilbio
Editorial perspective
How to avoid having your manuscript rejected: Perspectives from the Editors-in-Chief of Soil
Biology and Biochemistry
1. Introduction
As authors, we can get very focused on our need to publish—our
funders expect it and our institutions generally reward us for it. We aim
to get our papers into high-profile journals that bring us recognition and
acclaim. But really, this is something of a perversion of the process. In
the scientific process, papers aren’t for their authors—they are to
communicate new data and ideas to the wider research community, i.e.
the paper’s readers. A paper’s true value is based on what readers learn
from it—do they gain novel insights and new knowledge?
As journal editors, we are entrusted with managing the journal to
ensure that the papers we publish offer that value. Thus, while we may
work primarily with the authors, ultimately we work for the readers.
When an author submits a manuscript, the job of the editors is to
evaluate whether it meets the journal’s standards of focus, novelty, rigor
and clarity. The editors are entrusted with judging whether:
� The paper asks, and answers, questions that are important, novel,
and relevant to the target audience of the journal
� The methods and analyses are robust and support the interpretations
and conclusions
� The conclusions are well-grounded in the data, and are conclusive
� Any speculation/hypothesizing about the implications of the work is
clearly identified as such, and emerges reasonably from the data and
interpretations
� The writing is grammatically correct, and clear enough for readers to
follow the authors’ arguments
In the process of evaluating a submission, editors usually get outside
advice (peer reviews), but ultimately the editor makes the final decision
based on the evidence they have at hand. An editor accepts a paper
because it rates highly enough on all the criteria; when they reject a
paper, it is because it does not reach the needed level on at least one
criterion—and doesn’t look likely to reach that level with a reasonable
amount of revision and re-review.
2. SBB’s criteria are based on our aims & scope
The critical part of SBB’s scope statement is right up front: https
://www.journals.elsevier.com/soil-biology-and-biochemistry
“Soil Biology & Biochemistry publishes scientific research articles of
international significance which describe and explain fundamental
biological and biochemical features and processes occurring in soil
systems.”
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2020.107823
Available online 11 April 2020
0038-0717/Published by Elsevier Ltd.
The subsequent statements expand on this, but this excerpt captures
and defines the journal’s essence and core. In this statement, three pieces
are critical: “international significance,” “fundamental,” and “soil sys­
tems.” An SBB paper must be relevant to an international audience and it
must advance our understanding of the fundamental biological/
biochemical processes as they occur in situ within real soil systems. If a
paper fails to adequately address any of these elements, we will not
publish it.
SBB covers many aspects of soil biology and/or biochemistry, but
before you submit a paper, consider whether it addresses the following
elements:
1. Audience: Our principal readership is the global community of soil
biologists, soil biochemists, and soil ecologists. These are special­
ists—they know that soils are important to the functioning of the
global terrestrial system, that nitrification is the oxidation of
ammonium to nitrate, and other such basic information besides.
2. Questions: The focal questions driving the work should emphasize
processes that are broadly relevant to that global community. We do
publish papers that are based on work from a single study area, but
which use that site as an example, or a model system, to explore
broader questions and processes about how soils function. We do not
publish papers that only report case-studies reflecting particular
circumstances or treatments.
3. Focus and scale: Our goal is to understand the biological and
ecological processes that occur within soil—what are the dynamics,
drivers, and mechanisms of those processes? Papers should work
with real soil systems, and evaluate what the work means for in situ
biological dynamics and phenomena. SBB does not generally publish
papers that treat soil as a “brown box” whose bulk properties drive
whole-ecosystem fluxes. Equally, we are not likely to publish papers
that are about organism-level physiology unless they explicitly show
how that physiology regulates the functioning of the soil system. We
also don’t publish papers that are solely focused on nuances of soil
organic matter characterization—this is soil organic chemistry—and
which don’t either discuss the processes that produce the chemicals
or how they then influence soil organisms and processes.
4. Novelty & importance: Science involves a lot of work that nibbles
away at large problems—many good papers explore otherwise well-
studied processes, but in new circumstances or with new methods.
Much good science is incremental. Ultimately, those increments
facilitate larger synthesis, new insights, and deeper understanding.
Incremental or purely informational papers make their findings
accessible to the research community, and so may ultimately be
Editorial perspective
valuable, but they are not SBB’s target. We aim to publish papers that
offer more substantive conclusions, or that offer that larger synthesis.
SBB papers must show the readers why and how the work is novel.
5. Language: The language of SBB is English. All elements of a paper
must be written in grammatically correct “standard” English, which
encompasses both American and British English. Americans may
spell the element Al as aluminum and prefer shorter sentences (the
US literary tradition looks back to notably laconic authors such as
Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway, while British literary models,
such as Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, wrote longer and more
elaborate prose), but we share the rules of grammar. Papers must
follow those shared rules of grammar and usage.
3. An Editor’s approach: How we apply these standards when
we get a manuscript
As editors, when we receive a paper, we quickly evaluate how it
stands against the above criteria. If it fails on any one of the substantive
issues (internationally relevant, fundamental, and soil systems), we will
quickly decline it. Some of these papers are excellent pieces of research
that we might have been enthusiastic about for a journal with a different
focus, but which do not fit within SBB. In other cases, the paper’s story is
too narrow for a broad international journal, while in yet others, the
science is not up to SBB’s standard of excellence.
In contrast, if the science is solid but the English is not, we will
generally send a manuscript back to the authors for copy-editing before
considering it further. In assessing the language, we look first to the title,
the highlights, and the opening paragraphs. If there are grammatical
errors in the title, potential reviewers are likely to decline the invitation
to review! If someone does agree to review the paper, though, the next
thing they see is the Highlights. If those are ungrammatical, a reviewer
may skim over them, but they will likely start reading the manuscript
with a negative first impression—and first impressions can be hard to
turn around. That bad impression only gets worse if there are also lan­
guage problems in the opening paragraphs.
Many editors and reviewers may first scrutinse a manuscript when
we have the opportune moment of a short block of free time (e.g. waiting
for a flight at the airport). If we immediately run into problems, we’re
likely to stop reading and put it aside for when we have the time to invest
in a more careful read. That likely isn’t just an hour later—it might be a
week or more. Authors’ poor editing can therefore easily lead to both
delayed processing and then to a grumpy reviewer who might be more
inclined to focus on a manuscript’s limitations than on its strengths.
Everyone is unhappy. So give attention to polishing the language,
including those first pieces a reader sees. Every reader reads a title; many
readers skim highlights; some readers look at the abstract, while some
may skip straight to the conclusions—if any of these components
disappoint, a reader may ignore the rest of the paper!
Beyond the language, we look for several common issues that might
lead to a quick “Desk Reject.”
3.1. Common problem #1: Telling the wrong story
The first, and perhaps most common, problem is that authors have
not framed the message and the “story” of the paper appropriately for
our journal—they failed to target a broad international audience of
fundamental soil biologists. When that is the problem, it almost always
appears within the first paragraph—usually in the first sentence and
sometimes with the first words.
The opening paragraph of a paper defines a problem that the paper is
going to help solve; this might be an applied issue such as climate change
or agriculture; or it might be a basic science concern, such as the drivers
of soil microbial diversity. Readers expect that the conclusions will come
back to this problem, showing how the work contributes to a solution.
By defining the problem, the paper also defines the paper’s specific
target audience: “if you care about this problem, you should read this
2
Soil Biology and Biochemistry 146 (2020) 107823
paper.” If a paper’s opening paragraph defines a problem that is not
suitable for the journal’s target audience, an editor will likely reject it.
Research projects in soil ecology are often funded because of local,
regional, or national environmental challenges. When we write pro­
posals, therefore, we focus on such environmental problems. That is
appropriate for the proposal’s audience: reviewers and program man­
agers. But when you submit a paper to SBB about that work, however,
the audience is now different—it’s the international research commu­
nity. So, now the focus on the regional problem that got the project
funded is potentially a hinderance in getting the paper published in an
internationally-oriented journal. Rather, the local environmental prob­
lem which might have been the “lead actor” in a proposal might need to
step back to become but a “supporting actor,” allowing the core, basic
science issue to step forward onto center stage and to take the lead role
in the paper.
For example, imagine a paper submitted to SBB that opened by
saying “California’s rangelands are experiencing an increased frequency
of fires that damage soil functions, such as nutrient supply, that are
important for sustaining cattle production.” Who does this paper target?
Primarily, people who care about California’s cattle industry, or to be a
little more generous, who care about California rangelands. As SBB
editors, on reading this opening line, we’d probably already be consid­
ering alternatives to SBB: rejecting the paper or offering transfer to
Geoderma Regional.
How would that change if, instead, the first sentence were “With
climate change, wildfire is increasing globally, and is damaging
important soil functions such as nutrient supply and carbon sequestra­
tion”? Now the paper isn’t just for range managers; now it’s about
climate change and the fundamental soil processes of nutrient supply
and carbon sequestration, processes that occur everywhere! Cows
become rather incidental. This version defines the problem as important
soil biology. The study may have been done in California, but it isn’t just
about California. As editors, therefore, we’d be thinking about who to
ask to review the paper.
Each of us has worked extensively in local field sites (Schimel in
California, Ritz in Great Britain) and our papers’ titles sometimes note
that. But, the words “California” and “Great Britain” rarely appear in the
first paragraph of our papers, and maybe not in the introduction at all!
We often don’t mention where we did the work until the site description
in the Materials and Methods.
With the enormous growth of Chinese science, SBB naturally gets
many submissions that report on work that was done in China. That isn’t
a problem, any more than is getting papers reporting work done in
California or Great Britain. But it remains common that those papers
open by saying “In China …,” introducing an environmental challenge of
concern in China. This tells potential readers that the paper is about
China and its problems. Yet, there is probably no environmental prob­
lem that occurs in China that is unique to that country—pollution,
erosion, and climate change occur everywhere and are global concerns.
Each specific study area offers different perspectives on these prob­
lems—different soils, different climate, different land-use—which pro­
vide opportunities to explore the wider dimensions of the underlying
problem. You can study drought effects in China, or in Great Britain, but
for it to be an SBB paper, the overarching problem and question must be
about processes and phenomenon that occur in soil.
3.2. Common problem #2: No real question or hypothesis
The next common point of failure is at the end of the introduction,
where the paper defines its specific objectives. The problems that arise
here are closely related to those that sometimes open a paper—not
asking questions that focus a reader’s attention on what the work offers.
And by that, we always mean “What question will you answer?” and not
merely “What data will you generate?” A paper must identify a gap in
our knowledge and understanding; yet many papers seem to assume that
either the knowledge gap is obvious, or that a paper’s job is just to
Editorial perspective
provide information or data. But science is not just about data—it’s
about knowledge. It’s the authors’ job to make clear what questions they
are seeking to answer. So make sure to identify the substantive new
understanding and insights you offer, rather than just a data-focused
statement such as “because few data are available.”
To go back to the hypothetical paper about post-fire soils in Cali­
fornia, consider if it said “Our objective was to measure respiration in
soils that had been heated to different temperatures, reflecting potential
fire scenarios. But if that were the objective—why? This tells us what
data were collected, but it doesn’t tell us why anyone should care. What
does this work teach us? A better statement would be “Our goal was to
understand how soil heating changes the bioavailability of soil organic
matter; to do this, we measured respiration in soils that had been heated
to different degrees, reflecting potentially ecologically-realistic fire
scenarios.” This defines the knowledge gap and says how the authors
hope to fill it.
Another common weakness we see is weak or glib hypotheses. A
“hypothesis” such as “the addition of [Organic material X/Pollutant Y]
will result in a change in soil microbial community structure” is almost
certainly true, but is certainly not insightful—it’s so vague as to be
useless. A good hypothesis is clear and specific—it shouldn’t even be just
a prediction of the results, but a testable and falsifiable statement about
how you think nature works. A good hypothesis is based upon well-
rationalised arguments built from previous knowledge, preferably
which have been developed in the preceding text. The hypothesis should
then be revisited in the discussion section, usefully developing the
narrative by exploring how the findings advance understanding. What
did we learn?
3.3. Common problem #3: Poor presentation
A journal’s Guide to Authors is there for a purpose. It provides a
consistent manuscript structure, which, first, aids editors and reviewers
in assessing the piece, and also aids the eventual readers. Idiosyncratic
or inconsistent structure interferes with this. SBB stipulates separate
results and discussion sections, since in general this leads to a clearer
narrative. Values in tables should not contain ludicrous numbers of
significant figures. The advent of online publishing has increased op­
portunities to use color, but equally, to abuse using color. In earlier
print-dominated times, including a color plate was expensive, which
limited authors’ interest in color figures. There are well-established
ways to produce distinct and interpretable graphs and figures that are
black-and-white, or occasionally grayscale. These are still preferred—­
color rarely improves clarity for graphs. Inappropriate palettes, such as
yellow and pale green lines on a white background, or combinations that
are indistinguishable to people who are color-deficient are both disser­
vices to readers. Tiny fonts in figures that cannot be discerned without
magnifying are not admissible! A lack of line numbering makes refer­
encing points in manuscripts arduous for reviewers and editors—and so
eventually make revisions harder for the authors.
3.4. Common problem #4: Weak conclusions
Another common failing we often see in manuscripts is weak con­
clusions. A conclusion must conclude. It must show what the work has
contributed and how it has advanced our understanding of the soil
system. The stronger and clearer the conclusions, the more substantial
and impactful the paper is likely to be. Manuscripts that fail to offer
meaningful conclusions are likely to be declined.
Among the many ways to write conclusions, two we see commonly
Soil Biology and Biochemistry 146 (2020) 107823
are particularly weak. The first is the classic clich�e of the “more research
is needed …” statement. This points out what the study hasn’t done, and
so actually undermines the paper. Instead of showing us what questions
you have answered, it points out what you didn’t do—i.e. how you failed.
Don’t do that.
We are not arguing that you should not discuss the limitations of a
paper—it is important that you do. Rather it means you should discuss
them somewhere else than in the conclusions paragraph. Discuss the
limitations earlier; then conclude strongly within the boundaries set by
those limits.
The second common way to undermine a paper is with a concluding
statement that says the work is important and has implications for un­
derstanding the larger field, but which doesn’t spell out what those
implications and insights are! These include closing statements such as
“This study provides insight into the way in which [Pollutant X] in­
fluences soils” or “This study has important implications for better
managing [Ecosystem type Y].” If you say that a study has implications
but don’t spell out what they are, as readers, we are left wondering: what
are the implications? Do they really exist? Mostly we just assume that
the authors knew they needed a broad concluding statement and
inserted a “throw-away” line that points in the direction of broader
importance, but which really says nothing. That is actually rather rude
to the reader, and frustrating to an editor and reviewer.
Professional writers have a saying: “Show, don’t tell.” Don’t just tell
us the work is important—show us how it is important! If you show us
the specifics, and what the implications are, you don’t need a vague
statement that just says “this is important.” Last words are your most
powerful—they’re the punchline of the joke, your take-home message. If
the conclusion is weak, doesn’t that mean the entire paper must be
weak?
4. Conclusions
When you prepare a manuscript for SBB, make sure it puts your work
into a broader context and shows how it advances our under­
standing—provides insight—of a fundamental soil biological,
biochemical, or ecological process. Then, make sure it is written in
grammatically correct English and immaculately presented. Before you
submit a manuscript, read it again from the perspective of an SBB editor,
reviewer, or reader, rather than as an aspiring author. Revise as needed,
repeat as necessary. Only then submit.
If you do those things, we will happily send your manuscript out for
external peer review to ensure the science is robust and the insight is
clear. If the eventual concesus is that this is so, we will then happily
publish it.
Joshua Schimel, co-Editor-in-Chief*
Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology, University of
California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA
Karl Ritz, co-Editor-in-Chief**
Division of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences, University of
Nottingham, Sutton Bonington Campus, Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE12
5RD, UK
*
Corresponding author.
**
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: schimel@lifesci.ucsb.edu (J. Schimel).
E-mail address: karl.ritz@nottingham.ac.uk (K. Ritz).