Appealing arXiv moderators decisions

[Agerhell]

I have long been working on a paper and sent it into a total of seven journals. The first two tries resulted in some feedback, and at the third try I managed to get to the peer review phase.

At my last four attempts I got it back without feedback at two occasions. Once I had already sent it into another journal from the same publisher and thus they refused to review it. Once the editor thought my article was a bit out of scope for their journal.

I was happy when I got to peer review at a high-ranked journal. Later on, when I got refused without peer review from a journal that accepts a lot of bad grammar and spelling errors already in the abstract, I was not so happy.

Some month ago I decided to try to get my paper to arXiv. From my education I know a guy which has several papers in the most appropriate section, general relativity and quantum cosmology, but he had uploaded to few paper in recent years to have endorsement rights.

I found out that another guy that I contacted some year ago had endorsement rights at the general physics section and he was willing to endorse me.

I sent my paper in on January 31 but February 25 the moderators at arXiv decided to reject my paper, even though it was endorsed.

Now I have tried to appeal the moderators decision, making the argument that reaching the peer-review phase at a high-ranked journal should normally mean that the paper is good enought for arXiv and that I intend to resubmit the paper into the, perhaps more relvant, gr-qc section once I find an endorserer.

I do not have much hope for my appeal and now if feels like I am going to have to turn to viXra, a great defeat.

Anyhow, does anyone have any experience dealing with the moderators at arXiv? That is, when you have a paper that is endorsed by someone but it still gets rejected by the moderators. Will the moderators ever change their opinion?

 

[Choppy]

I don't have any experience with arXiv, but given everything you've said, do think perhaps the issue might be with the quality of the paper/work itself? Maybe you should focus on improving that before appealing any further decisions.

 

[Vanadium 50]

arXiv has no obligation to post anything, and the argument "it was rejected by other journals, but at a late stage" is not a strong one. Neither is "I posted it the wrong section because I couldn't find someone to endorse it in the right one."

I think Choppy may have a good point.

 

[0xDEADBEEF]

If you just want it to be out there on a preprint server you can try vixra.org

 

[Vanadium 50]

He mentioned vixra, and called it a "great defeat". I don't blame him. Vixra is filled with crackpottery and nonsense.

 

[eri]

Perhaps instead of asking people to endorse you, you could make a few friends in the field and get them to help you instead. Find out why your paper is getting rejected, and work on that. Getting into a journal or onto arXiv does not mean your work is suddenly relevant, useful, and correct. That's what you should really be worried about.

 

[G01]

The best thing you can do at this point is have someone who has published in the field read your paper and give you advice. Perhaps your friend who works in the same field can help?

You need someone to read the paper, and figure out what could be off about it. Is it basic science, perhaps some complication that you missed? Is it language? Are you not explaining your work clearly, or do parts of the paper sound convoluted to someone who is not doing the same work? There could be many things off about it. My first paper went through over a year of re-edits before my adviser felt good about submitting. It was a different paper by the time it went out.

My advice is to find someone, somewhere, who could give you a fresh perspective on your work.

 

[Agerhell]

My appeal was rejected in about 24 hours with, I guess, a standard formulation reading: "The moderator indicates that he will reconsider this paper when you get it through the review process and it is accepted at a reputable conventional journal."

Now I am one of the viXra boys...

I guess it is really hard to get an appeal through, no matter the merits (or lack thereof) of your paper since it is hard to come up with a good argument against a rejection that is made with no arguments...

Good advice from G01. I have already followed that advice some year ago, but if someone else is reading this thread in the future I recommend him/her to follow it.

 

[Vanadium 50]

arXiv is a preprint server. It's entirely reasonable of them to want to ensure that the submission actually is a preprint of something somewhere.

 

[G01]

arXiv is a preprint server. It's entirely reasonable of them to want to ensure that the submission actually is a preprint of something somewhere.

This is an important point. The arXiv is meant to get work that is eventually publishable out to the community faster while the paper is under consideration at a journal. While some people do only publish on the arXiv, and the arXiv does not have a peer review structure of it's own, the arXiv is not meant to be an alternative to the peer review process.

Work on the arxiv is supposed to be of (eventually) publishable quality. If the OP's paper has been rejected by referees and multiple journals have refused it (as he mentioned in a previous thread on the subject), then this is a signal that there is a large, very fundamental, problem with it. I obviously have not read it, so cannot be certain. But I am not surprised the arXiv is rejecting it.

This is why I suggest having the paper read and edited by someone who is established in the field. Along the same lines, the OP needs to take seriously the reasons the paper was rejected by reviewers in the past. Advice from someone with more experience whether a mentor or a reviewer is critical and absolutely necessary. This is why PhD students have advisers. If I was working alone, my first paper would have been (and, I freely admit, should have been) rejected. The back and forth with my adviser is what helped me get the manuscript into a publishable form.