How common is it for submitted papers to have minor errors?

Question

I am going to submit a paper in these days. I dedicated to it a lot of time, and a lot of effort to check that all the theoretical results in it are correct. Anyway, I am still afraid of having written something wrong without even realizing it, as the deadline is very sharp.

So my question is: how common is in the academia to find submitted papers with minor errors? If there is a minor error that is not invalidating the results, will the paper be rejected, even if the content is considered interesting?

Answer 1

That's what peer review is there for: to tell the author about the minor, but correctable mistakes in the paper.

The way I see it is that, of course, I spend a lot of time writing my papers and making sure that everything is correct. But pragmatically, you will have to come to terms with the fact that no paper will ever be perfect. There comes a point where you just have to take the plunge, submit it, and hope for the best.

Answer 2

It is very common for published papers to have still minor errors. Some are sometimes even introduced during the publishing process. So yes, submitting a paper with errors is common too. When submitting to a conference with website closing at a precise time, I do check (and find) errors up to the last minute.

Errors can be irritating to the reviewers. Generally, if they are minor and rare, they are not a cause for rejection, but can be a catalyst. Take a borderline acceptable paper. When the reviewer has 10 of them to review fast (for a conference for instance), it can be accepted if error-free, and rejected (with basically the same content) if containing a proportion of errors.

Clean papers are generally appreciated, reviewers may feel the authors have done some effort to help them review.

As it is difficult to re-read again a paper that you have written, suggestions:

• use your co-authors generously, make them explain to you the theory you have written,
• use your colleagues, friends or family, they can have a critically eye on what you cannot see anymore, notations undefined, etc.
• read the paper backward, aloud.

Answer 3

As long as your concept remains sound and your results are verifiable, it's a good chance your paper will get selected. The basic job of the peer-review process is to assess the concepts theoretically.

If there are minor mistakes that caught the reviewers' eye, it would be more possible that you will be asked for a minor revision as long as the overall concept remains intact. Otherwise, if you happen to find such errors later by yourself, you may make the edit in the camera-ready paper.

Having stated above, there are a wide range of journals and hence a diverse range of reviewers. The strictness of evaluation differ from one reviewer to another. Some won't even bother to evaluate results as long as the flow of concepts seem fine to them. It will take more than carefully evaluated results to get through some others. So, as Bangerth stated, hope for the best.

Answer 4

Almost all math papers have minor errors (e.g. sign errors, misphrased definitions, a wrong entry in a table, using different conventions in one part of the paper than another, etc.).

Answer 5

The phrase "in the academia" in your question needs clarification. Papers submitted in the Humanities would be expected to be error-free; in the Social Sciences, some tolerance for minor errors may be tolerated; in the Sciences, many universities will allow considerable latitude in quality of English, provided always that the science itself is trenchantly clear. Scientists who are not good writers will often hire grad students in the English Dept. to proofread and edit the text of their papers. Fees for such editing services are modest, and the fact that the English grad student probably knows nothing about the science, does not affect his/her ability to tidy up the text.