You want to publish a paper in Lipids, but are not sure what the best strategy is to enhance your chances of success. What should you do and what shouldn’t you do? What are some simple steps that will help leverage a successful outcome? In this editorial, I’ll highlight some rather simple steps that, when embraced, will better position your manuscript to move successfully through the peer review process at Lipids or any other journal.

There are some really simple steps to success, and as an Editor-in-Chief, it is highly frustrating that authors do not follow even the simplest strategy. First, look at the scope of work published in the last several issues of the journal and realistically assess how your work fits into what you see published in the journal. Is it a really good fit, or is it like fitting the proverbial square peg into the round hole? If it is the latter, more than likely getting a bigger hammer to try and fit that proverbial peg into the round hole is not a good strategy. Countless authors try this strategy and it results in a rejection without any peer review. This is the dreaded rejection at the level of the Editor-in-Chief and this letter often has limited value to the authors as a mechanism to improve the presentation of their work, as it doesn’t contain the feedback the authors would get from a fully peer-reviewed manuscript. How was this decision reached in the first place? Simple: The work is ill-suited for publication in the journal of interest; as such, the editor is not going to waste the precious time of the peer reviewers sending out a manuscript for peer review that just doesn’t fit into the journal. Despite the lack of success of this strategy, it is often repeated by many authors and is most often seen from non-Western nations, which may reflect misguided effort to get their work published.

Simply looking at the type of work published in the journal of interest would have saved the time and effort used by the authors to submit the manuscript to the poorly chosen journal. For Lipids, I often see manuscripts submitted that use natural products in a manner that does not fit with what we publish. We require that the active molecule(s) in a natural product to be identified and then used in the experiments. While we publish clinically oriented research papers, we are not a clinical journal and almost all of our clinically oriented papers published have some kind of treatment strategy that uses either a drug to see the effect on lipids or the use of dietary lipids to assess the effect on a clinical outcome. Submitting a purely clinical manuscript merely results in a dreaded rejection without peer review. This is simply not a good strategy for success.

Do you have work that you consider on the fringe of the scope of work published in the journal? I suggest writing a brief email to the Editor-in-Chief in which you highlight the major thrust of your work and perhaps attach the abstract. I am very pleased when authors take this approach and I generally answer their email within hours, giving them a good idea of whether their manuscript is a good fit with what is published in Lipids. This effort takes minutes to accomplish, but saves a tremendous amount of time for all parties if the work is not a good fit.

This brings me to another point that is often missed by authors. Despite nearly 30 years in lipid biochemistry and having published over 100 papers, I still read the Instruction to Authors prior to submitting a manuscript to any journal. Yes, even to a journal for which I serve in an editorial capacity. Why? Simply, every journal has a unique format and I like to put my best foot forward by following the journal’s style requirements. Amazingly, the Instructions to Authors are filled with valuable information and at Lipids, we have worked very hard to have a complete document for our authors to consult. Do you have a question about multiple first authors that are identified using the phrase “these authors all contributed equally” to the work herein? In our instructions, you will find that this notation is not permitted at Lipids nor are multiple corresponding (senior) authors. Does the Abstract permit subdivisions? Not at Lipids, but weekly I have at least one manuscript submitted with subdivisions, which clearly suggests that these manuscripts were previously sent elsewhere and rejected. This is not a winning strategy for putting your best foot forward. To avoid all of these minor issues, including the use of improper nomenclature, consult the Instructions to Authors to format your manuscript in the exact style of the journal.

These are rather simple issues focused on scope and examining the Instructions to Authors, but what issues are important that are in the authors’ control? Two important concepts are critical, novelty and experimental design.

First is novelty. Ask some simple questions prior to drafting the manuscript and ideally during the experimental design phase of the project. What is the novel experimental approach used herein to achieve the results? How do these results impact our thinking about a particular topic? How do these results relate to those found in the literature? Are these data merely incremental results? In other words, it is critical for your work to be novel and it is contingent on you to clearly illuminate this novelty in the Discussion. Often times I see manuscripts submitted in which the entire Introduction is about a page of double spaced text for an area in which the authors could easily cite 100’s of papers. How is this problematic? It suggests that the authors have a limited working knowledge of the field and undoubtedly this knowledge was equally weak when designing the experiments. As such, these manuscripts almost always have an issue with novelty. In addition, these manuscripts rarely have a broad, deep, meaningful analysis of how this work advances the literature. Hence, the authors have failed to position their manuscript to successfully move through the peer review system. Further, in this situation, the work appears to be merely an incremental advance in the literature. Oftentimes this position is solely due to the authors’ reluctance to examine, appreciate, and relate how the literature relates to their work. It is much more difficult to get this type of manuscript accepted into Lipids or any other journal for that matter.

Second is experimental design. Ask yourself some simple questions. Are the diets for animal studies properly designed? Are proper controls included in the experimental design? Is the analysis properly done? It is amazing how many times I have seen manuscripts presenting studies that lack proper controls or in which the analysis is incorrectly done. Assays are not well-suited for the work or the capabilities of these assays are improperly reported or considered. Animals are not adequately acclimated to the diet or diets are drastically different between groups making any comparisons irrelevant. Add on the lack of rigor in testing the hypothesis combined with over-interpreting the meaning of the results, and then the enthusiasm for the manuscript is significantly reduced. In other words, make sure going into the design of the experiments that it is more than adequate to test the hypothesis and that interpretation of the results are realistic relative to what the data show. Often, I see marginal results made into an earth-shaking observation, but only in the eyes of the authors. Hence, this produces a credibility gap with regards to the design of and interpretation of the experiments, which drastically reduces enthusiasm for the manuscript.

What about negative results? Do negative results mean an immediate rejection? Again, this is highly dependent upon how the authors position their work. If the results are indeed negative, but demonstrate something that is novel and unknown, the likelihood for success is quite high. However, when negative results are highly contrary to the literature, the authors need to position the work in a meaningful manner. This does not simply mean just stating that these results are important because they are different, but rather demonstrate how these results were achieved using the proper methods and controls that demonstrate critical thinking. Many important manuscripts reporting negative results have been rejected, not because of the data, but because the authors did not position their work for success.

In summary, it is critical for the authors to embrace the notion that it is their responsibility to position their manuscript for successful peer review. This process starts at the conception of the experimental design, not at the beginning of the writing process. The authors should strive, based upon the literature, to design novel experiments that present an interesting and intriguing story. Being less than creative is not an ideal strategy for success, but rather a speedy route to failure. Realistically examine the literature and position the work in the context of what is known. If the results are contrary to those in the literature, it is the authors’ responsibility to build a credible case as to why their work is an important addition to the literature. However, negative results that are novel in nature, are not necessarilty contray to what is found in the literature, but the authors must highlight how these results are critical to the field. Certainly, I hope my advice herein enhances the ability of colleagues from around the world to better position their manuscripts for successful navigation of the peer review process.