Publications are important for communicating scientific discoveries. They are also one of the critical aspects of gauging success in an ecologist’s research career and have been since the 1940s when the idea of ‘publish or perish’ first emerged (Carpenter et al . 2014). We inherently assess someone’s career track record based on a range of metrics that take into account the number of publications, number of citations and the number of years a researcher has been an active researcher: most metrics that are fraught with underlying biases (Ioannidis et al . 2019). To append to this list of successful outputs, all researchers have many a manuscript rejection letter tucked away in their archives; and depending on where we send our manuscripts, we may end up with many more rejection emails from journals than acceptance letters. Such rejections are part of the scientific process (Ali 2010): it can be a very brutal process, but also can be very helpful in our development of strong scientific arguments (Kim et al . 2019). Rejection of manuscripts is one of the most difficult decisions to deal with as an Editor‐in‐Chief. The manuscript review process is one of the most important, and in many instances, one of the most controversial aspects of science, and the rejection of manuscripts plays a vital role in this aspect. By no means is the process perfect, but peer review is a key foundation to the scientific process that enables researchers to learn and grow in their scientific endeavours.

Manuscripts may get rejected at a range of stages of the review process when being submitted to Austral Ecology, or many other Wiley journals (Wiley 2020). Here I would like to give the readership and authors of Austral Ecology some insight into why manuscripts have been rejected over my time as Editor‐in‐Chief (2017 onwards). Across all scientific journals, it is an issue that is widely considered but rarely quantified.

Manuscripts can be rejected at a range of points throughout the submission, editorial or review process (Wiley 2020). At the submission stage, editorial offices may do an immediate cull if the manuscript is poorly formatted, or if the manuscript is clearly outside the context of the journal. Once the manuscript is passed to the Editor‐in‐Chief, it might be subject to a desktop reject – that is I read the cover letter and abstract and make immediate decisions of whether or not to allow the manuscript to go to an Editor. Editors and Subject Editors may then also decide to reject without sending out to review. Editors may read the whole manuscript and determine that the quality of the research, the scope or the quality of the work is not of a high enough standard to send out to review.

If a manuscript is sent out to review, then the reviewers may find significant flaws in the design and methodology, which will also lead to the Subject Editor or Editor‐in‐Chief to determine the manuscript should be rejected. Reviewers are required to assess the manuscript quality, and their roles have been well defined elsewhere (Publons 2018). Poor research design can happen through the development of the questions and hypotheses, through poor experimental design, poor analysis, data interpretation, or through poor writing and explanation. The Wiley Author Resources go through these issues very well, and are worth looking at, especially for early career researchers (Wiley 2020).

As Austral Ecology is an international journal, we have a large number of manuscripts being submitted from around the world, including those with English as a second language, such as Brazil and Argentina. English is now the common standard language for scientific communication and is expected in most international journals (Ferguson et al . 2011). Both Brazil and Argentina now have the second and third largest number of manuscripts submitted to Austral Ecology (Wiley‐Australia 2019: Australia has the highest number of submissions). There has been a perception of ‘linguistic bias’ in the literature; however unfounded (Hyland 2016), it remains a concern if not fully understood and examined (Flowerdew 2019). As Editor‐in‐Chief, I wanted to find out if there was an indication of ‘linguistic bias’ in Austral Ecology based on the reasons behind why papers are rejected. I have therefore assessed the reasons for manuscript rejection since 2017.

Questions I addressed:

1. Why do manuscripts get rejected from Austral Ecology ?
2. Are there different reasons for manuscript rejection among primary authors country of origin?

出版物对于交流科学发现很重要。它们也是衡量在生态学家的研究生涯成功的关键方面之一，一直以来时的想法“发表还是灭亡”第一次出现在20世纪40年代（卡彭特等人。2014）。我们会根据一系列衡量指标来固有地评估某人的职业生涯记录，这些衡量指标应考虑到出版物的数量，被引用的数量以及研究人员一直是活跃研究人员的年限：大多数衡量指标充满潜在的偏见（Ioannidis等。2019）。除了这份成功的清单之外，所有研究人员的档案中还夹着许多稿件拒绝信。根据稿件的发送目的地，与录取通知书相比，我们收到的拒绝录电子邮件可能更多。这种拒绝是科学过程的一部分（Ali 2010）：这可能是一个非常残酷的过程，但也可能对我们发展强有力的科学论据非常有帮助（Kim等人，2019））。拒绝稿件是主编要处理的最困难的决定之一。稿件审查过程是科学中最重要的过程之一，并且在许多情况下是科学界中最具争议的方面之一，而拒绝稿件在这方面起着至关重要的作用。绝不是完美的过程，而是同行评审是科学过程的关键基础，科学过程使研究人员能够学习和发展自己的科学成就。

当稿件被提交给Austral Ecology或许多其他Wiley期刊（Wiley 2020）时，可能会在审查过程的各个阶段遭到拒绝。在这里，我想向读者和澳大利亚生态学的作者们提供一些见解，以解释为什么我在担任总编辑（2017年起）时就拒绝了手稿。在所有科学期刊中，这是一个被广泛考虑但很少量化的问题。

在整个投稿，社论或审阅过程中，稿件可能会被拒绝接受（Wiley 2020）。在投稿阶段，如果稿件格式不正确，或者稿件明显不在期刊范围之内，编辑部可以立即对其进行剔除。一旦手稿传递给总编辑，它可能会遭到桌面拒绝-也就是说，我阅读了求职信和摘要，并立即做出是否允许手稿交给编辑的决定。然后，编辑者和主题编辑者也可以决定拒绝而不发送评论。编辑可以阅读整个手稿，并确定研究的质量，范围或工作质量的标准不够高，无法发送出去进行审查。

如果将稿件寄出进行审阅，那么审稿人可能会发现设计和方法上的重大缺陷，这也将导致主题编辑或主编确定应拒绝该稿件。审稿人必须评估稿件的质量，其作用在其他地方已得到明确定义（Publons 2018）。不良的研究设计可能通过问题和假设的发展，不良的实验设计，不良的分析，数据解释或不良的写作和解释而发生。Wiley作者资源很好地解决了这些问题，值得一看，特别是对于早期职业研究人员而言（Wiley 2020）。

由于《南方生态学》是一本国际期刊，因此我们从世界各地提交了大量手稿，包括巴西和阿根廷等以英语为第二语言的手稿。英语现在是科学交流的共同标准语言，在大多数国际期刊预期（弗格森等人。2011）。现在，巴西和阿根廷都向澳大利亚生态学提交了第二和第三大手稿（Wiley-Australia 2019：澳大利亚提交的手稿数量最多）。文献中有一种“语言偏见”的感觉。但是没有根据（Hyland 2016），如果没有完全了解和检查它仍然是一个问题（Flowerdew 2019）。作为总编辑，我想根据拒绝论文背后的原因，找出南方生态学中是否存在“语言偏见”的迹象。因此，自2017年以来，我已经评估了拒绝稿件的原因。

我解决的问题：

1. 为什么手稿被《南方生态学》拒绝？
2. 在主要作者来源国中，拒绝稿件是否有不同的原因？