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I received the following rejection letter from the journal editor. It does not look like “rejection and resubmission” to me. Should I revise and resubmit? Is there any chance of acceptance?

... I very much regret to inform you that your manuscript has been rejected. Below are the comments and recommendations for this manuscript.

If you wish, please consider the suggestions made by the reviewers and/or Editor's Office and, possibly, consider submitting a new version to the journal. If it meets the journal requirements, we will then send it out for independent peer review. It has been our experience that those who follow the reviewers' comments and re-submit their paper generally are successful in publishing in ABC. However, the decision to rewrite the paper rests with you...

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  • The wording is clumsy and unusual but essentially this is an invitation to revise and resubmit with responses to reviewer comments as per the normal peer review process, isn't it?
    – croc7415
    Commented Apr 29, 2020 at 10:18
  • What do the reviews actually say?
    – Allure
    Commented May 1, 2020 at 13:38

2 Answers 2

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Your options are to take the reviewers advice and then resubmit, submit elsewhere, or just forget about submission. Of the three, the first seems, to me at least, to be the best option.

The last option seems clearly undesirable, but even the second may well leave you in exactly the same situation with a few months gone by.

But, the paper is yours and you can choose. Nor does it "belong" to the reviewers and you can choose to ignore some of their advice in a rewrite, though you should have reasons for that if you do. It is generally wise to "consider" every comment made by reviewers and at least rewrite "in the spirit" of the comments if they are reasonable.

It may be, of course, that the reviewers didn't understand what you were trying to say. But that is generally an indication that you haven't expressed yourself well enough that experienced people can follow your arguments and evidence. And that is also reason to rewrite.

I assume you are asking because you are at the beginning of your career and don't have a lot of experience with this. Just the practice of rewriting is probably worth it to improve your exposition style and to shore up any holes in your arguments. It is a learning process if nothing else.

And note that their instructions seem to be quite positive about the outcome of a rewrite. I'd recommend you do it. But the paper is yours.

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That looks like a standard Reject and Resubmit to me. Therefore, provided you take into account reviewers' and editors' suggestions/comments and answer on their questions (if any), it is worth considering a resubmission to this journal.

There might be additional connotations to be read from the particular comments given by reviewers which would require a dramatic change in the methodology, results' collection OR some fundamental issues with the paper. It is quite likely that the resubmission is reviewed by the same set of reviewers which has its pros and cons.

Overall, given solely the information in the question, I would seriously consider resubmission upon careful examination of the review.

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