Can I ask the editor for rapid processing (rapid peer review) in the cover letter of my paper submission?
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Question
I'm a PhD student and I need to (almost desperately) squeeze in another paper for my dissertation in the next 6 months. Is it acceptable to explain my situation to the editor and ask to set a tighter deadline to the reviewers?
My field is health sciences and biostatistics.
Answer
You can ask for anything, politely.
But there is much you can do to weight the odds in your favor. What you want to minimize is the number of times a paper has to go back and forth (number of times it sits in someone's queue) and the amount of work every party involved has to do.
- Make sure to adhere to all the journal's submission guidelines. You don't want to waste a half-week getting it sent back and forth for technical reasons.
- Suggest reviewers: For niche topics it can take time, sometimes hours, for an editor to identify appropriate reviewers. Do this work for them: suggest 5-10 reviewers and explain why they might be a good fit.
- Be a good writer: Have friends outside your field read the paper for understandable content. Have non-technical friends read for grammar mistakes.
- Release the code: Put your well-commented source code with a makefile on Github. This is journal dependent, so try to investigate first. As a reviewer and editor any paper without code is going back, but not everyone believes in that approach.