Conflict of Interests Regarding Peer Review: Bias in Manuscript Rejection

The majority of submitted manuscripts, across all article-journal types, may be rejected for one or more reasons... While the reasons for rejection vary between desk, post-peer-review, and post-editorial-review rejections, many of the issues raised could be easily avoided by devoting enough time to planning and conceptualizing the work under consideration. Indeed, Aristotle (384–322 BC) in the Rhetoric (the art of persuasion), which was a theory of - civic discourse - stated: “The mistake lies in the beginning; as the proverb says, ‘Well begun is half done;’ so an error at the beginning, though quite small, bears the same ratio to the errors in the other parts.” This quote seems especially appropriate in this case. This paper examines the various reasons for which an article may not be accepted or considered for publication and then the paper moves into providing an explanation of the different reasons by which an article may not be considered for publication based on the reviewer’s belief, faith, professional discrepancies or methodological outcomes. Well organised and sufficient preparation is the key to success. The authors hope that people across academia and other professional experts can use this discussion when leading training-building research workshops to create awareness and assist researchers in planning and writing research papers that have better probabilities of acceptance, yet are easy to assimilate for the average reader and truly advance knowledge. Keywords: bias, manuscript, prejudice, rejection, review