How to Avoid Desk Rejection: What Does an Editor Check?

Direct answer: The editor of a busy journal decides whether a manuscript is worth sending out, often from the abstract and the journal's instructions. Read as a triage, the order is topic fit, compliance with the instructions, a clear research question and design, readable text, and an integrity check. A weak point at any step can end the review.

Picture the editor of a journal that receives more manuscripts than its reviewers can handle. Jawaid and Jawaid (2019), the chief editor and an associate editor of the Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences, report that their journal checks new submissions within two weeks and sometimes within ten days. They add: "We take the decision after reading the abstract most often and after going through the full manuscript in a few selected cases" (Jawaid & Jawaid, 2019, p. 1). Other journals work differently, so the order below is MAAS's reading of the published evidence, not a standard procedure.

1. Topic fit. Meyer et al. (2018) coded an "unimportant or irrelevant topic to the journal's mission" in 137 of 369 early rejections, or 37%.
2. Instructions. Garg et al. (2015) listed non-compliance by authors among the reasons for rejection at 17.8%.
3. Question and design. Meyer et al. (2018) found an ineffective study question or design in 338 of 369 manuscripts, or 92%.
4. Readability. Text that was difficult to follow appeared in 89 of 369 comments, or 24% (Meyer et al., 2018).
5. Integrity. Issues with scientific conduct appeared in 20 of 369 comments, or 5% (Meyer et al., 2018).

The five checks correspond to the five parts of the later sections, so you can work through them in the same order before you submit.

Direct answer: A desk rejection is the editor's decision to decline a manuscript before it reaches external reviewers, while a peer-review rejection follows written reviewer reports. Editors also call the first one sudden death rejection or editor's triage. The first judges fit and presentation, and the second judges the depth of the science.

Jawaid and Jawaid (2019) list the names editors use for the early decision: desk rejection, sudden death rejection, immediate rejection, initial triage and editor's triage. A peer-review rejection comes later and rests on reviewers' written comments. Bordage (2001) analysed the comments on 151 manuscripts submitted to a medical education conference and found that each reviewer who recommended exclusion wrote a mean of 8.1 reasons. His conclusion separates what you can repair from what you cannot: "other problems that the reviewers identified (ignoring the literature, designing poor studies, choosing inappropriate instruments, and writing poor manuscripts) are likely to be fatal flaws warranting rejection" (Bordage, 2001, p. 889).

The two decisions ask different things of you, so the response to each is different too.

Source: Meyer et al. (2018); Bordage (2001); Jawaid and Jawaid (2019).

Direct answer: No single rate applies to every journal. The editors of one medical journal report that 70 to 80% of submissions are not processed further after initial screening, while another journal rejected 522 of 902 submissions that reached a decision. Editors screen early because submissions outnumber the reviewers available.

Jawaid and Jawaid (2019) write that the share of manuscripts not processed further "varies from 70-80%" at their journal, and they explain why: "we have too many submissions as compared to the number we can handle due to human resource and financial constraints" (Jawaid & Jawaid, 2019, p. 1). The same editors note that many rejected papers are of good quality. Garg et al. (2015) analysed 1,000 consecutive medical and dental submissions to the Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research and rejected 522 of the 902 that reached a decision, which is 57.9%.

The trend points upward in the one study that frames it that way. Meyer et al. (2018) examined 369 manuscripts submitted to Academic Medicine between December 2014 and December 2015 and rejected before external review, and they begin from the observation: "Increasingly, manuscripts are rejected at this early stage" (Meyer et al., 2018, p. 464). Wu et al. (2024) analysed over 5,000 rejected transport papers and tested how similarity rate, duplicate-submission rate and topic relate to desk rejections.

Direct answer: Meyer et al. (2018) coded the editors' comments on 369 manuscripts rejected before external review and found nine reasons. The most frequent were an ineffective study question or design (92%) and a suboptimal data collection process (49%). Manuscripts had three or more reasons on average, so fixing one is rarely enough.

The sample comes from one medical education journal, so read the percentages as a map of what editors notice, not a forecast for your field. The last column is MAAS's suggested check.

Source: Meyer et al. (2018), Academic Medicine, 93(3), 464-470; third column by MAAS.

Garg et al. (2015) report a different ranking in another field: commonality of subject at 44.6%, non-compliance by authors at 17.8%, methodological issues at 17.3% and plagiarism at 11.1%. Two journals give two lists, so check what your own target journal publishes.

Direct answer: Check fit before anything else. Read the aims and scope, then look for recent papers in the same journal that resemble yours in topic, method and audience. Elsevier's guidance lists being out of scope first among the usual reasons for desk rejection, and Meyer et al. (2018) coded irrelevance to the journal's mission in 37% of cases.

van Vliet and Zhang (2023), writing for Elsevier, state it plainly: "Common reasons for desk rejection (i.e., before external peer review) are usually related to the paper being out of scope" (van Vliet & Zhang, 2023). Meyer et al. (2018) conclude that "clear identification of a research question that is addressed by a well-designed study methodology on a topic aligned with the mission of the journal would address many of the problems that lead to rejection" (Meyer et al., 2018, p. 464). Fit is therefore a question about both the topic and the question you ask about it, and it is the first habit to build if you want to know how to avoid desk rejection across several journals.

Three steps make the check concrete:

1. Read the aims-and-scope page and note the article types the journal accepts.
2. Open the last two or three issues and look for papers like yours; if you cannot find one, treat the journal as a doubtful target.
3. Search Scopus or your reference list for the journals that already publish your references, and keep a shortlist of three to five.

Our guide on how to choose a Scopus journal walks through the shortlist step by step, and the academic journal entry explains how titles differ by scope and audience.

Direct answer: Editors judge compliance and readability quickly, so ignored instructions and hard-to-follow text hand them an easy reason to stop. Jawaid and Jawaid (2019) name failure to follow the journal's instructions and poor English among the common reasons, and Meyer et al. (2018) coded difficult text in 24% of comments.

Jawaid and Jawaid (2019) give a plain list of what their editors see: failure to follow instructions on the journal website, manuscripts that are too long, poor English and grammar, missing ethics approval and unregistered clinical trials. Garg et al. (2015) counted poor drafting at 6.70% of recorded reasons. None of these says anything about your data, which is why they are the cheapest rejections to prevent.

Build a checklist from the journal's guide for authors before you finalise the file, and tick it item by item:

1. Word limit and abstract format, including whether the abstract must be structured.
2. Section order; most empirical journals expect the IMRaD layout of introduction, methods, results and discussion.
3. Reference style, ethics statement, funding statement and conflict-of-interest statement.
4. A language check by a fluent reader; van Vliet and Zhang (2023) advise that when language is the reason, "improving the language of your manuscript is vital for success in the next journal."

Because the editor reads the abstract first, it must state the question, the method and the main finding in the order the journal expects. The guide on how to write an abstract covers that sentence by sentence.

Direct answer: The research question carries the most weight, because the largest published count of early rejections found an ineffective question or design in 92% of 369 manuscripts. Accepted manuscripts in Bordage's reviewer data were praised for the importance of the problem, so state the question and why it matters in the first lines.

Bordage (2001) examined the 28 manuscripts that reviewers recommended unanimously for acceptance and reports the main strengths: "The main strengths noted in accepted manuscripts were the importance or timeliness of the problem studies, excellence of writing, and soundness of study design" (Bordage, 2001, p. 889). Meyer et al. (2018) add that a weak discussion or conclusion appeared in 139 of 369 early rejections, or 37%. Both findings point to the same habit: say what the study asks, show the evidence that answers it, and stop the conclusion where the evidence stops.

The cover letter is where you make that case to the editor in a few lines. Name the research question, the finding and the reason the journal's readers need it, and avoid repeating the abstract word for word. The guide to the journal cover letter sets out a structure you can adapt to your own paper.

Direct answer: Treat it as routing information. Read any reason the editor gave, fix what is fixable, choose a better-matched journal and submit there rather than appeal. Elsevier's guidance notes that most appeals are not successful unless invited, and that submitting elsewhere is usually the better route. Committee on Publication Ethics (2024) adds that journals expect a manuscript not to be under consideration at two journals at once, so withdraw or wait for a decision before you resubmit.

van Vliet and Zhang (2023) advise: "In most cases, you’re more likely to be successful by submitting your manuscript elsewhere." They suggest Scopus to find journals that have published similar research, Elsevier's JournalFinder, the journals you already cite, and any transfer offer from the rejecting journal. Jawaid and Jawaid (2019) describe the editor's side: when a topic is interesting, their journal asks authors to rectify the deficiencies and resubmit, which is an invitation and not a right.

The four moves, in order:

1. Read the reason, and treat a short message as a routing note, not a verdict.
2. Fix what you can, starting with the points in the table above, which is the core of how to avoid desk rejection next time.
3. Match the paper to a better-fitting journal using the scope check.
4. Submit to that one journal; the full route is in our guide to submitting a paper to a journal.