| The common pitfalls of manuscripts receiving unfavorable reviews for DRT publication |
| Aside from absence of originally and lower than required quality for archival publication, many manuscripts suffer from one or more of the following weaknesses. Authors are encouraged to ensure their manuscripts are free of these weaknesses before their first submissions for review: Manuscripts too long - not consistent with contents. Excessive introductory material, unnecessary and unrelated references, excessive self-citations, citations of works unavailable to readers, citation of non-refereed literature. Avoid including material widely known and appearing in text and handbooks. Lack of Notation with units. Use of non-conventional notation. Objective of work not spelled out clearly. Authors need to justify need to publish their work, especially when it is in an area already widely covered. Authors must demonstrate they have searched the journal contents and IDS proceedings as a minimum before deciding to write and submit their papers. Often work published some 10-15 years ago is repeated and submitted. This consumes valuable time and financial resources of the editorial office and referees. Authors should cite papers from this journal as they are more readily available and accessible than in journals for which DRYING is a minor interest area. Referees are asked to check this aspect carefully as many authors appear to be unaware of work previously published often many years earlier. Quality of artwork is poor - including size of lettering, symbols, etc. No reproducibility and uncertainty data reported for experimental studies. Numerical studies also must explain how the validity of the simulations was tested. Authors should consider design of experiments and statistical analysis of data before drawing conclusions. Results must be of wider interest. Papers of only local interest are not encouraged. Drying studies typically couple transport phenomena with material science. Thus, quality aspects must not be neglected when considering drying conditions for a specific product. Number of references should be about 10 for Technical Notes (not encouraged now) and no more than 15-20 for full papers. Authors must reference most relevant papers (preferably from the journal where relevant) but must not include unrelated or peripherally connected work. Also, refrain from excessive self-citations, references to theses that are not readily available, literature in other language than English (unless absolutely needed), papers in local conferences, seminars, etc. The quality of English text is not acceptable. Referees do not have time to correct English. Authors should seek local professional help to check the text before submission. It may be impossible to consider for review papers written in poor English. With a heavier than anticipated manuscript flow from over 45 countries, the journal must be increasingly selective and demanding to serve its international readership from academic as well as industrial world. The journal is striving very hard to increase the value, usefulness and impact of work published in it to its readership in the short, medium as well as long terms. Our referees serve a very important cause in achieving this goal for which the whole drying community is grateful to them for their thankless effort. |
| Updated: January 28, 2001 |