Rejection

Gerad Taylor Your grant went unscored; the review panel returned the manuscript without review. Your reaction may reveal how well you deal with rejection, and even whether you want to pursue a science career. Still angry? You say the reviewers were, um, less than intelligent? That may not be a constructive reaction, according to studies and experts. A study by ecologists Phillip Cassey of Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris and Tim Blackburn of University of Birmingham, UK, examined failure-to-publish rates and attitudes of ecologists who had published in leading journals.1 "Who gets rejected? Everyone," they write. On average, 22% of each survey participant's papers were rejected at least once. Views of rejection were found to depend on rejection rate. For example, ecologists with higher rejection rates were more likely to blame poor refereeing or faulty editorial processes than were those with lower rejection rates. Those with the low rates more often viewed their own rejections as being based on scientific grounds. Consider the converse. Perhaps your response to rejection can influence your ultimate success in publishing papers or securing grants "If you're too sensitive to criticism," says Paul Schnur, a program officer at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, "you can't do well in a field like science that's based on self-correction and critique by one's peers." DON'T TAKE IT PERSONALLY Jeffrey Boatright, an assistant professor at the Emory University Eye Center, admits he used to get angry at a negative review and then set it aside. "I would never feel good enough to come back to it," he relates. "The second grant I ever submitted to NIH is still sitting in the bottom of my file cabinet." These days, Boatright uses a more mature strategy. He looks for good points by the reviewer. "It helps me get over any kind of emotional problem," he acknowledges. "I can say okay, here's something that I can work with, right now, today." IS IT FAIR? First, assess whether the rejection is valid. Sometimes rejection is a sign of a mismatch between grant and study section, or between manuscript and journal. Having trouble interpreting the reviewers' comments? It's easy to get help on a paper. Make a phone call to the editor, who will make the final decision, and find out which of the reviewers' comments resonate most. For a grant, it can be more difficult because you cannot talk to anyone with decision-making power. The program officers can help only if they were sitting in on the study section meeting. But if a grant application is unscored or triaged, as half the grants are during any NIH cycle, it was probably not discussed at the meeting. At that point, the program officer can relate only what the rejected researcher already can read on the pink sheet. Remember that sometimes a rejection just indicates the luck of the draw. "Maybe it just missed the cutoff," Schnur says. "It could be a wonderful grant that happened to come in with a group of super-wonderful grants." REBUT AND RESUBMIT Rejection is not necessarily final. View it as an initial response, even as the beginning of a dialog. "The strategy here is, assume you're smarter than God," jokes Boatright. Don't take no for an answer the first time around. Boatright recounts one of his own unscored grant applications. The reviews were less than helpful in giving him suggestions for improvement. Nevertheless, he resubmitted the grant, virtually unchanged, save for the required introduction to a resubmission. "[The introduction] basically said, 'You guys are so right, I'm so wrong. But do me the favor of thinking about it this way.' And the grant immediately got funded, no questions." Says Schnur: "The main reason people don't get funded is they fail to resubmit." DIPLOMACY Address the issues raised by the reviewers honestly and forthrightly, Boatright says. "It's crucial that you do it in a way that doesn't personalize it." He usually has someone else read his response to reviewers "to be sure I'm not being too snarky." And don't pretend like you've fixed something if you haven't. To an editor, Boatright says, a vague response like, 'We addressed these issues in the manuscript,' is "a huge red flag." Pull down that red flag and remember, when you next experience rejection (and you will), calm down, refocus, and resubmit. Jill U. Adams (jilluadams@aol.com) is a freelance writer in Delmar, NY. 1. P. Cassey, T.M. Blackburn, "Publication rejection among ecologists," Trends Ecol Evol, 18:375-6, August 2003. function sendData() { document.frm.pathName.value = location.pathname; result = false if (document.frm.score[0].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[1].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[2].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[3].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[4].checked) result = true; if (!result) alert("Please select") return result; } .myradio{background-color : #94bee5} Please indicate on a 1 - 5 scale how strongly you would recommend this article to your colleagues? Not recommended 1 2 3 4 5 Highly recommended Please register your vote

Rejection

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