All too often these days I find myself writing letters to authors with the bad news that The above-referenced manuscript, which you submitted to IEEE Intelligent Systems, has completed the review process. After carefully examining the manuscript and reviews, the editor in chief has decided that the manuscript isn’t suitable for publication in IEEE Intelligent Systems, and therefore we must reject it.
I wish I never had to send such a letter, but currently we’re only able to accept fewer than one in 10 of the papers submitted for regular publication (special-issue acceptance rates vary depending on topic). This means not only am I rejecting weak submissions, but all too often I must reject papers that contain some strong material but aren’t quite up to the standard we need to maintain. Especially in these latter cases, I try hard to explain to the author what’s needed to meet our needs.
I realized recently that I was repeating the same advice to multiple authors, so I thought that putting it in this column might be of use to those writing for this magazine (and other technical publications). This advice might also be useful to share with your graduate students or the junior colleagues you mentor—I learned it through a lot of reviews of a lot of rejected papers, and I sure wish someone had shared more of this with me earlier in my career!