110 PRS Proofreading and Editing Service PhD Experts • All Academic Areas • Fast Turnaround • High Quality If the letter provides something a little more helpful by suggesting, for instance, that your work is interesting, but your article would be more appropriate for a more specialised journal or perhaps just the opposite, that your paper would be a better fit for a less specialised journal, that, too, is usually an example of ‘no’ meaning no. In such cases, it’s best simply to move on and resubmit elsewhere, taking into consideration while choosing a new journal (see Section 2.1 above) any specific comments the editor might have offered. Whenever in doubt about whether a response is a rejection or a conditional acceptance (which I discuss below), have a colleague who’s worked with editors and publishers take a look at the letter. A less than positive reply from an editor is not the type of news one wants to share, of course, but a second opinion from a knowledgeable, trustworthy friend can be extremely helpful at this point. 7.3 ‘we’re Interested but…’: the Revision Process Many rejection letters can be read in a more positive light as constructive criticism that can help improve papers and the scholarship in them, and even as conditional acceptance letters, though some would argue that there is a clear distinction between rejection and conditional acceptance that resides in that all-important ‘but’ in the heading above. A letter that explicitly states that it will accept a paper if (and only if) the conditions it lays out – these are generally problems to be resolved – are met, sometimes within a set amount of time, is a conditional acceptance. A letter that lays out a number of problems to be resolved in your paper if the editor is to consider or reconsider it isn’t quite a conditional acceptance, but very nearly so. A letter that rejects your paper and provides very specific reasons for so doing isn’t a conditional acceptance either, but it holds out some hope. PARt III: commUnIcAtIng wItH JoURnAl edItoRs: sUBmIssIon, AccePtAnce, RevIsIon And ReJectIon