Criteria underlying the rejection of submissions to the journal of biocybernetics and biomedical engineering

We explain why many manuscripts submitted to the journal Biocybernetics and Biomedical Engineering (BBE) are rejected before the peer-review stage. Each year the journal receives over a thousand submissions, but only about one third pass the initial screening. This process is necessary because the number of available reviewers is limited while the number of scientific papers continues to grow. Therefore, editors must filter out manuscripts that clearly fail to meet scientific or ethical standards. The article also addresses common misconceptions among authors. Editors do not accept only groundbreaking discoveries, and incremental contributions or well-documented negative results can also be valuable. Likewise, the journal does not prioritize papers based on their predicted citation counts. Instead, it values methodological rigor, transparency, and relevance to the journal's readership. The most frequent reasons for desk rejection include submissions that fall outside the journal's scope, lack a clear research question or literature review, contain methodological flaws, or show insufficient originality. Other problems include “salami publishing,” plagiarism or self- plagiarism, poor presentation of results, weak or missing discussion, unethical authorship practices, and lack of demonstrated expertise by the authors. Editors also watch for warning signs of paper mills or manipulated data. BBE evaluates manuscripts based on six key criteria: originality and impact, methodological rigor, validity of conclusions, connection to prior research, clarity of presentation, and author credibility. The goal of the editorial process is to ensure that published work is reliable, rigorous, and contributes meaningfully to scientific knowledge.