Biggest Reasons Why Research Papers Get Rejected and How to Prevent It

Academic papers getting rejected is nothing uncommon. If you are a student and your paper got rejected, don’t worry. Your professors will help you by pointing out the problems of your paper. However, if you are submitting your thesis paper to a research site, and your paper gets rejected, you might have to find out the issues on your own.

Whether you are writing a thesis paper as a student or as a researcher, getting your paper rejected can be demotivating. After all, you invested lots of time and focus on your paper. So, it’s best to avoid the situation by knowing beforehand and avoiding what might get your paper rejected.

Here we have the most common reasons why thesis papers get rejected –

1. The Paper Doesn’t Have an Aim

A thesis paper is all about getting deep into a topic. If your thesis paper strays off of its aim and gets vague, you are on the wrong path. Many new researchers often write vaguely and get distracted from the main idea of the paper. Since the writing doesn’t essentially provide a solution or any new input, this type of papers often face rejection.

What to do:

• Select your research topic carefully.
• Research intensively and extensively on the topic before writing the paper.
• Make your mind abo how you want to proceed from the start to the end.
• Create sections or blocks for different steps of your writing.

2. Incomprehensible Writing

Research papers should be clear and intensive. If your writing lacks readability due to bad grammar, unrelated examples and anecdotes, and redundancies, there’s a good chance your paper will fail to charm your professors.

What to do:

• Write in the simplest way possible so it doesn’t make reading difficult. Take help from a paraphrasing tool to rewrite your sentences.
• Use short and moderate-length sentences instead of long, boring ones.
• Revise and edit before submitting your paper.
• Use a grammar checker tool to detect and fix grammatical and spelling issues.

How to Do Research | A Step-by-Step Guide for Writing a Research Paper

3. The Paper Doesn’t Follow the Standard

Usually, your professor or the research paper submission site provides a set of instructions for writing a research paper. If your thesis paper fails to meet the mark of the expected standard, you will most probably have to face rejection.

What to do:

• Read the instructions or requirements for writing your thesis paper before you start writing.
• If you didn’t get any specific requirements or instructions, then follow the standard research paper writing guideline by looking them up online.

4. Insufficient Evidence

To support your thesis statement, you need to provide enough evidence for it. But if your paper lacks enough evidence, your paper’s submission site or your professors might reject it.

What to do:

• Provide sufficient evidence to prove your thesis statement. You can provide evidence by referencing a number of sources that support your statement. To do this, you have to research profoundly on your topic.
• Do not use unverified sources as references as they will make for poor pieces of evidence. Always try to use reputable sources to support your idea.

5. Undetermined Result

An inconclusive result will hurt your research paper badly.

An undetermined result means your paper doesn’t really prove anything. Scattered, poorly done assessments often lead to bad, inconclusive results.

What to do:

• Write a clear statement in the result section to prove your main idea.
• If you don’t research properly, you won’t be able to write a conclusive result anyway. So, research and determine your idea first.

6. Plagiarism

Plagiarism is one of the most common reasons for the rejection of research papers.

Many novice researchers often do a big mistake by copy/pasting content from other published research papers and sources to create their own papers. While detecting plagiarism in old days could be a bit tough, now that research papers are being published online, it’s become way easier to find duplicate content.

Plagiarizing in academic writing is an ethical crime, and it will get your paper rejected as soon as it’s detected.

What to do:

• Ensure the uniqueness of your paper by doing a plagiarism check. For a fast and accurate check, use an online plagiarism checker.
• Don’t copy/paste content from someone else’s writing. Instead, take ideas, analyze them, and write on your own.
• If you consider a particular text from someone else’s content really important, you can use it in your paper by rephrasing the words. Or you can use a rewriter tool to rewrite the text to make it look more personalized.

Optimize Academic Writing by Paraphrasing | Rules of Paraphrasing

Final thoughts

Getting your paper rejected is not only demotivating, but it might also make you start the paper from the beginning. To avoid this annoying and energy-draining situation you must be careful while writing your research paper from the start. Follow the guideline for writing a proper research paper from the beginning of your research, so you won’t have to deal with getting your paper rejected.