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Abstract:
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Publishing papers in today's high-profile medical research journals requires an understanding of the flaws that lead to rejection - yet little information is available to guide authors. In 2016, a REDCap survey on this topic was emailed to 243 people including: editors from high-profile medical journals, a random sample of JAMA reviewers, and recent Nobel Laureates in Medicine; 47 responded. This survey was a replication of a survey conducted and published in 2000 by the primary author. The results of the two surveys were nearly identical, demonstrating that the research methods are robust and reproducible, and also that the issues related to rejection are stable over time. The most commonly reported reasons for which medical journal manuscripts were rejected related to issues that statisticians have the experience and expertise to address. These included: "design of the study", "deficiency in methodology", "research design problems", "poor methods", "inappropriate statistical analysis", "inadequate or inappropriate presentation of the data", and "inadequate sample size". Statisticians should be involved as collaborators from the beginning of a project to prevent these flaws.
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