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Recently I submitted a paper in a journal then after a few days I got following comments:

Your submission of the manuscript has been unsubmitted. This is because your "Author's Novelty File" was not detailed enough. In order to proceed, please briefly describe, in a few lines, the new contributions of your paper to the field. Do not repeat for this purpose the content of your abstract. Instead, provide a brief itemized list of these contributions in a separate file.

I don't understand what I have to write now. What he is asking for? I need help with this.

Thanks for giving me time.

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It sounds like the journal wants you to identify in what manner your paper has expanded the state of knowledge in your field. Have you contributed a new experimental method? Or perhaps you've provided new insights into some sort of phenomenon, or measured data for a new material, or so on. These contributions should be collected in this "novelty file."

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I recently submitted a paper to IJNME. In the 'File Upload' section, it states the following:

"Author's Novelty File" - All Authors are now required to supply an additional file. Please briefly describe, in a bullet pointed list, the new contributions of your paper to the field. Do not repeat for this purpose the content of your abstract. Instead, provide a brief itemized list of these contributions in a separate file.

I hope this helps.

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I think they're asking for an "explanation for non-experts". Often, the abstract of a paper gives only enough information to be fully understood by an expert in the field (or at least in that problem). Part of your job in explaining your work is explaining why it's important. Think about how you would explain your work to a student with roughly the same background as you, but who hasn't thought much about your project. Now think about how you would explain it to a researcher working in a completely different field... in 5 sentences or less. Your novelty file should say something like that. Emphasize here's what we added.

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    This doesn't seem to be the point of this exercise. This is, I think, a screening tool for the editors to see if a paper is worth forwarding on to reviewers at all.
    – aeismail
    Jul 2, 2012 at 7:27
  • @aeismail What criteria do you think they use to decide whether to forward it to reviewers? It seems to me that it would be based heavily on "Why is this important?" and "What did we add?" Otherwise, wouldn't the abstract suffice?
    – Dan C
    Jul 2, 2012 at 15:00
  • Some journals may have stances against "incremental papers"; a paper that basically corrects or slightly improves on the work of others may not be as eagerly sought as a paper that presents something that is mostly or entirely new.
    – aeismail
    Jul 2, 2012 at 16:05

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