The paper is probably OK to be published, but just not in Zootaxa. You need to find a less high-powered journal which publishes papers similar to this one.
If you know any friendly biology academics, ask them if they know of any smaller, less demanding, journals that might want to publish it.
It can also help if you mention in the paper why the information contained in it is important. Like for example this is the first known record of this or that. Or this is relevant because of such and such.
We give a new records of a rare species, provide its first living individual photo and ecology in detail, and list the checklist of Chinese Scelimena (The genus where the species belongs to), then raise a synonymy of a species.
But I found that Zootaxa has a big decrease on IF. Over the years it is about 0.9 to 1, but last year it decrease to 0.69. I guess it makes the reviewers being more strict in reviewing to save their IF.
I have recently had a paper accepted by the third journal I submitted it to. But I have also had papers that never came to anything ā there just wasnāt enough there, or my premise was flawed. When I first started as a graduate student, the head of the graduate school told us that when it comes to research, about 50% of what you try will not work.
This is honestly the only way I have been published, besides the paper that came from my thesis. Not having access to the funding or equipment of an institutional scientist, I obviously cannot do large-scale or elaborate experiments. Let career scientists pursue high-impact papers as part of their career metric; I study what interests me, and if that means a niche paper, Iām okay with that.
Why did Oriental Insects reject it? This certainly sounds publishable somewhere.
The editor say our article is unpropare for it is mainly for a species instead of a larger group of geographic area, it may not attract enough citations, and rejected it. But I see both in Oriental Insects and Zootaxa has much simpler article. Thatās why I am doubting.
I am very appreciate that many of you compare me with professional scientist.
But I am only an undergraduate. Donāt like professional scientist, I donāt have so much time to waste and chances to lose. If I have enough time and several articles can submit, being rejected will be not so painful. I am a poor gambler, this article is all of my gambling.
Do you have a faculty mentor to help you through this process? Over here in the US, papers by undergraduate students that make it into publication usually have the faculty member who mentored/supervised their project and provided the lab space and funding as senior scientist/corresponding author on the paper. If you do not have a senior scientist involved, maybe try to find a faculty mentor you can approach to help you get your paper polished and published.
The journal Biotropica has just opened a new paper category for āfield notes.ā I know youāre reluctant to try another journal, but if these organisms are tropical at all, this might be a possibility.
I cooperate it with Josip Skejo from University of Zagreb and John Bratton just mail me he can check the article for me. But I didnāt call for the help of my faculty because it is not in their area.
I search for Biotropica and yes it is good. And I think my species should be tropical.
Here it is https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/49683177
If I have enough time waiting for reviewing I will think about it.
Please donāt worry about honor and impressing this group of people. Science is not a competition. No publication is a guarantee of acceptance, and you seem to be putting too much hope in this one thing.
Your language skills are not good enough yet. You also are going at this from the point of view that individual achievement is the goal when this site is all about collaboration and helping others out.
Stop worrying about who is number one. Just do good science. That will be enough.
Unfortunately, if I understand correctly, in China the opinion of specific groups matters very, very much. The course of a young personās future IS determined by honor and achievement as determined by societal rules.
Recently our university is selecting Oustanding Graduates. There are several situations for students to get the quota directly. One of them is to publish an article. Thatās why I want to have my article accepted urgently. Hell, how I wish the article can be accepted tomorrow so that I can hand it in as my material.
Guess what? Another situation to get the quota is to get the qualification of Postgraduate exemption. And I canāt make it because the article didnāt keep up with deadline and I need it to get the bonus points. And Iām only one point less than the guy before me.
Maybe many of you canāt understand. I put my hope on the article and it really mean so much to me.
Thatās tough!
I found many people think it too lightly. I appreciate your kindness but I have to say maybe you donāt know the situation in China.
In the school we have to get various achievements such as publishing paper, join competition and win arawd, do voluntary work to get working hour, apply for patent and so on. All the achievements will change into bonus points when we apply for scholarship, qualification of excemption or titles. The more you have done, the bigger chances you will get. That is to say, we are conpeting with other students in various selections, we are using achievements to win achivements. Thatās why some of your words looks unbelievable for me. Without enough achivements, how can I win in the selection?
Yes. A very difficult situation.
@manassas any updates on your publication? I will echo all the great comments from others above and add one suggestion.
I highly recommend that you submit the article to a preprint server. That way the information in your article can be shared while the content is peer-reviewed. bioRxiv is a very popular preprint website. https://www.biorxiv.org/ Once your article is hosted there, it is āpublishedā but not peer-reviewed. You can then share a DOI for the article etc. This is a great way also to get feedback on the article.
Please understand that publishing your first article is often very difficultāand publishing any article takes at least months, sometimes years to go through peer-review and revisions. You really cannot count on getting things in a peer-reviewed journal quickly. Thatās just the way it is.
Iām not an entomologist but Iāve helped ecologists and biologists from non-English speaking countries get articles published in English language journals. Message me if you want me to read your articleāor put on bioRxiv and share a link and we all can read it and make suggestions for improvement and target journal.
Zootaxa rejected it at 7th June, it was the third time our article was rejected. But fortunately they encourage us to resubmit it.
We collect some more materials and plan to make good use of all the things we have to enrich our article.
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