102 PRS Proofreading and Editing Service PhD Experts • All Academic Areas • Fast Turnaround • High Quality 6.3 Ready and willing: submission Procedures Ideally, you will have familiarised yourself with the journal’s submission procedures before or while preparing your paper, so will already have formatted the different parts of your paper in appropriate ways and used the right type of files, but when you find yourself ready to submit, you should check all submission requirements again to be sure you’ve not missed any details and double-check your paper and other files to be sure they conform to the requirements in every way. Ignoring the specifics of a journal’s instructions about how articles should be submitted is an effective technique for irritating an editor before he or she has read even a single word of your work, so you need to do your best to ensure that you don’t give that editor any reason to believe that aspects of your paper might not conform to journal requirements and thus decide not to read it (or even your covering letter) at all. In many cases, not meeting the submission requirements will simply win you a request to resubmit appropriately, but that takes time and patience on both your part and that of the journal’s staff, as well as potential revisions, so it’s best to get it right the first time and immediately establish a professional and productive relationship with the journal in which you’re hoping to be published. Although there are journals which accept multiple submissions – that is, that are willing to consider papers that are simultaneously submitted to other journals as well – this is rare among academic and scientific journals, often considered somewhat unethical and best avoided. Conscientious editors and reviewers spend a great deal of time on your paper, generally on the assumption that you genuinely want to publish your work in their journal and that their views are important to you. If you submit your paper to several journals with the intention of publishing it in the one that gives you the best review, you not only diminish the value of the effort invested by the editors PARt III: commUnIcAtIng wItH JoURnAl edItoRs: sUBmIssIon, AccePtAnce, RevIsIon And ReJectIon