The five stages of grief towards accepting a rejection letter

Stage 1: Denial

• Re-reading the decision letter over and over again to make sure it really says “I regret to inform you …” and not “I am pleased to inform you …”
• Re-reading the decision letter to look for other markers of a rejection letter, such as “careful consideration”, “we only accept n % of submitted articles”, and “not a reflection on the quality of your work”, just in case they typed “not accept” instead of “accept” by mistake
• Pinching yourself in the face to make sure it is not a bad dream, since you have had it before

Stage 2: Anger

• Re-reading the rejection letter and criticising it for lack of compassion and logic. How can there be “space constraints” in the era of online publication? And “we receive a high volume of submissions each week” is just … [censored]
• Having an extended lunch break with your colleagues to criticise the whole system of scientific journal publication
• Thinking that it was all reviewer two’s fault. Maybe if you can find their contact details …
• Planning to spam the journal submission system with 100/n copies of the manuscript since, according to the rejection letter, only n % of the submitted articles are eventually accepted for publication

Stage 3: Bargaining

• Writing a rejection of rejection letter, as suggested by Chapman and Slade2
• Thinking about what would have happened if you had used American instead of British spelling, maybe Times New Roman was not a good font choice, maybe the submission date was not a good day on your Chinese lunar calendar, or maybe your office has bad Feng Shui
• Thinking that perhaps it’s karma from recommending the rejection of that paper you just peer reviewed for another journal

Stage 4: Depression

• Deleting your rejection of rejection letter draft; what is the point really? What is the point of doing research? What is the point of life?
• Taking a long hot shower, singing Welcome to my life, Because of you, Bleeding love, and the list continues (it is a long shower)

Stage 5: Acceptance

• Realising that you are too far into the game to quit now, and that you are not giving up the whole forest for one tree
• Revising and reformatting your manuscript for submission to another journal, while listening to songs such as I will survive and Go the distance
• Printing and framing the rejection letter, just in case you become the next JK Rowling
• Channelling your negative energy into something useful, such as writing your experience about dealing with rejection letters in an article