103 PRS Proofreading and Editing Service PhD Experts • All Academic Areas • Fast Turnaround • High Quality and reviewers who read your article, but will also tend to ignore what might be valid and valuable criticisms of your paper – criticisms that if taken seriously and accommodated in revisions would improve your paper. A better and more professional practice (if somewhat more time-consuming) is to submit to one journal and only submit to a second one if the response from the first is a simple rejection or requires revisions that you feel after careful reflection would be inappropriate for your work. If you do feel the need to submit your paper to more than one journal at once, be sure to inform each journal of this fact in your covering letter. It’s also good in this case to set a deadline in your letter – three months after submission, for instance – by which you’ll be hoping to hear back before making a final decision about which journal to choose, but be aware that in some cases this can backfire and make your paper a lower priority than a paper that has been sent exclusively to one journal. Most academic and scientific journals now accept and many of them insist on online submission. If you’re new to this process and find aspects of it confusing, send your questions along to the email address that is usually provided as a contact for submission queries. It’s far better to ask and have your questions clarified than to complete the process incorrectly or give up and attempt to submit in ways no longer acceptable to many journals (in a print copy via postal mail, for instance). Be sure that your documents are in the correct file formats – Word is among the preferences of most journals, but there will often be other options as well. Sometimes figures (and occasionally large tables) will need to be sent as separate files either in the same file format as the main document or prepared via a different programme, so be sure to prepare and submit them just as the guidelines indicate, taking into consideration whether they will be reproduced in black and white or colour in print, online or both. Take care, too, with the placement of tables and figures within your main PARt III: commUnIcAtIng wItH JoURnAl edItoRs: sUBmIssIon, AccePtAnce, RevIsIon And ReJectIon