お世話になった原稿をNature, Nature Structure＆Molecular Biologyに投稿して蹴られたので、Scientific Reportsに転送しました。二ヶ月ほど待たされてRejectされましたが、論文のMethod等に問題がある様ですが、きちんと判りません。編集者は面白いと思ってくれている様ですが、査読者が失礼なコメントをしています。
私としては修正してもう一度ここに再投稿をしたいと考えていますが、ご意見を聞かせてください。以下に手紙の写しを送ります。
3rd Mar 2017 Dear Dr. Nosaka, Thank you for submission of your manuscript "Enzymatic reaction sites on a plane formed with four intron positions". We have now carefully evaluated the work and discussed it among the editorial team. Unfortunately, we have decided not to consider the manuscript further for publication in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. We can only consider a small proportion of the manuscripts submitted to our journal and are often forced to make difficult decisions. Manuscripts are evaluated editorially for their potential interest to a broad audience, the level of novel insight obtained and whether the findings represent a significant advance relative to the published literature, among other considerations. In this case, we are interested in the influence of mRNA structure on protein structure and function, and we recognize that the analysis that you describe will be of value to others working in this area. However, after discussion among the editorial staff, I am afraid we are not persuaded that this work warrants publication in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, due to concerns about the immediate interest of the findings to our broader readership. Dear Dr Nosaka, Your manuscript entitled "Enzymatic reaction sites on a plane formed with four intron positions" has now been reviewed by the Editor. A copy of the Editor's comments is appended below. In the light of their advice I regret to inform you that we cannot publish your manuscript in Scientific Reports. You will see that, while your work is of interest, substantive concerns were raised that suggest that your paper does not fulfil the publication requirements for Scientific Reports that is, that papers must be technically sound in method and analysis. Unfortunately, these reservations are sufficiently important to preclude publication of this study in Scientific Reports. Thank you for the opportunity to consider your work. I am sorry that we cannot be more positive on this occasion and hope you will not be deterred from submitting future work to Scientific Reports. Best regards, Nicholas Silvaggi Editorial Board Member Scientific Reports Editorial Board Member comments: I regret to inform you that your manuscript entitled “Enzymatic reaction sites on a plane formed with four intron positions” cannot be considered for publication in Scientific Reports. In the opinion of the editor, the manuscript does not describe the results of experimentation and is thus not appropriate for consideration as a research article. It could, perhaps, be an interesting and useful section of a comprehensive review article dealing with catalysis in aspartate aminotransferase, or PLP-dependent proteins in general, but as it stands now, it does not represent even an incremental advance in our knowledge of PLP-dependent enzymes. What has been done is analogous to doing a small set of sequence alignments and then saying that some residue is important because it was found in the same place in all the sequences. You would need to come up with a hypothesis and then test that hypothesis with actual experiments.
両ジャーナルとも、Methodセクションに本質的な問題があることを丁寧に説明していると思います。とくに、Scientific Reportsは、問題をよりはっきりと指摘してくれています。現状では、この論文に編集者が興味を持ってくれる可能性は低いでしょう。彼らがレターの中で伝えようとしているのは、Methodに原著論文たり得る強固な仮説がなく、その仮説を検証するための実験が不足しているということです。レビュー論文の一部としてなら、興味深い内容であると考えているのかもしれません。今後の方針としては、以下の2通りが考えられるでしょう:
1. 仮説を再考し、その仮説を検証するための実験を行なってからMethodおよびResultのセクションを書き直す。
2. 原著論文としての出版にこだわらず、広範な文献研究を行い、レビュー論文として投稿する。
いずれにせよ、両ジャーナルとも現状では出版できないという意志を明確に示しています。したがって、小幅修正のみで同じジャーナルに再投稿しても、好ましい結果は得られないでしょう。ほかのジャーナルに投稿する場合も、受け取ったフィードバックをもとに論文を書き直すことをお勧めします。そうすれば、アクセプトされる可能性は確実に高まるはずです。