1. Introduction
A manuscript may be returned within days without review, accompanied by a note stating that the work is not a suitable fit for the journal and that the English would benefit from professional editing before submission elsewhere.
This is a common experience in international publishing, and also one of the least informative. Such notes are typically brief and generic, and in many cases they may not identify the underlying problem. Manuscripts written in fluent, grammatical English are regularly desk-rejected, while manuscripts with noticeable second-language features are regularly published. This suggests that factors other than sentence-level correctness often play a substantial role.
This article examines what those factors are likely to be.
2. What "improve the English" may mean
Because editors work under time pressure, rejection notes tend to be short. The comment that "the English needs improvement" may be used to describe at least four distinct problems, only one of which concerns grammar:
- Sentence-level errors that impede comprehension. These are genuine problems, but also the most straightforward to address.
- Register mismatch, in which writing is grammatically correct but conversational, ornate, or otherwise inconsistent with the conventions of the field.
- Claim strength that does not match the evidence, most often overstated but occasionally so heavily qualified that no clear claim remains.
- Structural and rhetorical problems, in which readers cannot locate the contribution, the argument does not develop, or sections perform the wrong functions. This category is arguably the most consequential and the least likely to be named explicitly.
The practical implication is considerable. Language editing services generally address the first problem but not the fourth. A manuscript may therefore return from editing with cleaner prose but the same underlying weakness, and be rejected again.
3. Making the contribution visible early
In most fields, international journals expect the introduction to perform a specific rhetorical function, and to do so efficiently. Swales' (1990) Create a Research Space (CARS) model, a widely used description of this structure in English for academic purposes, characterises it as three moves:
- Establishing a territory: showing that the area is significant and summarising existing knowledge.
- Establishing a niche: identifying what is missing, unresolved, or contested in that body of work.
- Occupying the niche: stating what the present study contributes and outlining the structure of the paper.
The second move appears to be where many unsuccessful manuscripts fall short. Some establish the territory at considerable length before proceeding directly to the method without stating what is lacking in the existing literature. Readers may then reach the method section without a clear sense of the problem being addressed.
This pattern often reflects the transfer of local publishing conventions rather than a weakness in reasoning. In some national and regional traditions, extensive deference to prior work is expected, and explicitly identifying a gap may be perceived as presumptuous. In international journals, by contrast, identifying the gap is generally expected, since it provides the rationale for publication.
In practice, the second move benefits from being explicit enough to be quoted. The following structure may serve as a model, expressed in the author's own words:
Although X has been extensively documented in [context], studies have largely relied on [approach], and little is known about [specific gap]. This matters because [consequence].
The third move can then follow directly:
The present study addresses this gap by [what was done]. It contributes [specific claim] to [specific scholarly conversation].
If readers cannot identify the contribution from the first page, the manuscript is likely to be at a disadvantage in review, regardless of the quality of later sections.
4. The literature review as argument
A second structural pattern associated with rejection is a literature review written as an annotated list: Nguyen (2019) found one result, Smith (2020) another, and Lee (2021) a third. Each summary may be accurate, yet the review does not build towards a conclusion.
International journals generally expect the review to be organised by idea rather than by study, and to lead towards the gap identified in the introduction. Each paragraph would typically serve one of a small number of functions: establishing consensus, identifying disagreement, exposing a limitation shared across studies, or narrowing the focus towards the research question.
A useful revision test is to read only the topic sentences, ignoring the citations. If they form a coherent argument that arrives at the research question, the review is likely to be effective. If they read as a sequence of author names, reviewers may describe the review as "descriptive", which is the term commonly used for this problem.
Synthesis also involves grouping studies. A sentence such as three studies using self-report measures found an association, whereas the two using observational data did not represents synthesis; listing all five studies in sequence does not.
5. The distinct functions of Results and Discussion
Conflating these sections is common enough that many journals address it in their author guidelines, and it frequently leads to requests for major revision.
| Section | Function | Material that does not belong |
|---|---|---|
| Results | Reports the findings neutrally, in a deliberate order, with statistics or excerpts as evidence. | Explanations, comparisons with other studies, implications, and speculation. |
| Discussion | Interprets the findings: their relationship to prior work, possible mechanisms, limitations, and implications. | New results reported for the first time, and repetition of every finding in the original order. |
The Discussion also tends to follow a conventional sequence: restating the principal finding, relating it to the literature introduced earlier, considering possible explanations, acknowledging limitations, and drawing out implications. This sequence closes the loop opened by the second move of the introduction. A Discussion that does not return to the gap it set out to address may leave the paper structurally incomplete, even if each paragraph is sound.
A frequent weakness is a Discussion that largely restates the results in prose. If a sentence could be moved to the Results section without loss, it probably belongs there.
6. Calibrating claim strength
Academic writing in English makes extensive use of hedging (Hyland, 1998), and the conventions are more precise than they may first appear. The aim is not vagueness, but alignment between the strength of a claim and the strength of the evidence, with language that signals that alignment.
| Type of evidence | Typical language |
|---|---|
| Correlational, single study | was associated with, suggests, appears to |
| Experimental, adequately powered, replicated | shows, demonstrates, caused |
| Qualitative, small sample | participants described, in this context, these accounts indicate |
| Plausible but untested mechanism | may reflect, one possible explanation is |
Two problems are common. Overclaiming, such as writing proves where the design supports suggests, or generalising from a single institution to a national population, is likely to lead to rejection more quickly, because it suggests that the author has not recognised the limits of the design. Overhedging is subtler: stacked qualifications (it may possibly be somewhat suggested that) can leave a paper without any clear assertion, and reviewers may report that they cannot identify the claim.
As a general guide, one deliberately chosen hedge per claim is usually sufficient. Limitations are also more persuasive when presented as genuine constraints on interpretation rather than as formulaic apology. A statement such as the sample was small and further research is needed tells reviewers little that they will not already have noticed.
7. Journal fit and the cover letter
A considerable proportion of desk rejections do concern fit, as editorial notes often state. Before submission, the following checks may help:
- Review recent issues. Published articles tend to give a more reliable picture of the journal's priorities than the aims and scope statement, which may be broader than editorial practice.
- Consider whether the manuscript engages with the journal. If it cites nothing the journal has published, this may indicate that it is addressing a different scholarly conversation.
- Consider how the study's context will be received. Some international journals routinely publish single-country studies, while others expect an explicit argument for wider relevance. A study of one Vietnamese university may be publishable in either, but in the latter it is likely to need a paragraph explaining what it illuminates beyond its immediate setting.
A cover letter is most effective when it is brief and does three things: states the contribution in one or two sentences, explains why the journal is an appropriate venue, and confirms the required declarations. Editors typically read it when deciding whether to send a manuscript for review, so a full summary of the study is unnecessary.
8. Responding to reviewers
An invitation to revise and resubmit is a positive outcome, but it is often handled less effectively than it could be. The response document is a genre with its own conventions:
- Address every point, numbered and in the reviewer's order, including those with which the author disagrees.
- Quote the comment, respond, and identify the change, giving a page or line number and quoting the revised text.
- Disagreement is acceptable when it is reasoned and courteous. A response such as we appreciate this point, and have adopted a different approach for the following reason… is entirely appropriate. Leaving a comment unaddressed is not.
- Where reviewers disagree, note this explicitly and explain how the conflict was resolved. Editors generally expect authors to do so.
Thanking reviewers once, briefly, at the beginning of the response is usually sufficient. Repeated expressions of gratitude throughout the document add little.
9. The question of fairness
The advice above concerns how to work within a system that is not neutral, and it would be misleading to present it otherwise.
International publishing in English imposes real and unevenly distributed costs. Authors writing in an additional language often invest time and money that Anglophone colleagues do not, for work of comparable quality. Reviewers may at times conflate unfamiliar phrasing with unclear thinking. Valuable regional scholarship may remain less visible because it is published in languages that major indexes cover less completely. Acknowledging this is not a complaint but an accurate description of the context, and it explains why much of the advice above concerns convention rather than quality.
10. Conclusion
Two conclusions follow. The first is practical: because these conventions are conventions, they can be learned, and learning them may offer a substantial return on effort. Much of what this article describes concerns not English proficiency as such, but the function of the introduction, the function of the discussion, and the appropriate strength of a claim. These can be learned deliberately, including from articles recently published in the target journals, which are often freely available.
The second is that the distinction between convention and contribution remains important. Meeting conventions competently is not the same as conducting good research, and a paper that satisfies every structural expectation while contributing little has succeeded only in a limited sense. The conventions exist to make a contribution legible, which is both the reason to learn them and the reason to keep them in proportion.
Related reading: SSCI, SCIE, AHCI, ESCI: what your promotion committee actually counts discusses choosing where to submit, and Declaring AI use in a methods section discusses disclosure when language tools are used during drafting.
References
- Hyland, K. (1998). Hedging in scientific research articles. John Benjamins.
- Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge University Press.