Why Was My Paper Rejected without Review?

Abstract

Environmental Science & Technology has a proud history of publishing outstanding science in environmental science research.The journal takes great pride in excellence in the review process, including the quality and constructive tone of peer review feedback.These high standards and expectations of the publication are defined and maintained by a diverse team of global scientific experts.This quality review process is fundamental to ES&T's ability to publish the most important and impactful research in our field, and the journal would like to express its gratitude to the dedicated scientific researchers who donate their time and expertise in delivering this excellence in review.In 2020, ES&T is projected to receive over 8000 new submissions.To effectively manage the review of this number of manuscripts, ES&T has implemented a rigorous system involving an initial assessment by the Editor in Chief or Executive Editor team, and if appropriate, by an Associate Editor with domain expertise.The decision is made at this point whether the manuscript should continue and undergo full peer review.The peer review process involves selecting and inviting multiple independent world-class scientific reviewers for an indepth assessment of the manuscript and may take some weeks to complete.Therefore, to minimize author delays and to avoid reviewer fatigue, a significant fraction of manuscripts are not selected for full peer review and are returned to the corresponding author by the ES&T Editorial team.This "prescreening" approach prior to peer review provides several benefits to our scientific community, including rapid and informed decisions for authors, and prioritizing only those papers that are considered to be of high quality, and possess both novelty and impactfulness to undergo the peer review process.The ES&T Editorial team handles this prescreening review process with sincere earnestness.All papers have a minimum of two prescreen reviews before making a "Reject Without Review" decision.If the novelty and potential impact of a paper is uncertain, the benefit of the doubt is afforded to the authors and the manuscript is sent to an Associate Editor with appropriate expertise to provide a third opinion.The decision is then made either to "Reject Af ter Editorial Review" or to send for peer review.If rejected at this stage, the Editorial team tries to provide authors with constructive feedback and a rationale for the decision.Manuscripts may also be rejected with a "Reject and Resubmit" decision.In this case, the editors have determined the paper is of high quality, novelty, and impact, but the authors need to address critical aspects of the manuscript to meet the minimum criteria for review, for example the manuscript may require additional experiments, a more rigorous data analysis, or significant rewriting (see more information below).This decision type indicates the editors actively encourage resubmission of the paper if the defined deficiencies are addressed.

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