Appeals process

The Bulletin's appeal process:

The editorial team of the Bulletin recognizes authors' rights to appeal editorial decisions at any stage. Authors who wish to submit appeals of manuscripts that have been rejected without external review should first consult the list of reasons for rejection to make sure that they have a good case for making an appeal. If you wish to appeal the rejection of your paper, please write a detailed letter explaining why we should reconsider, with a point-by-point rebuttal of any reviewer's criticisms provided, and send it to bulletin.submit.ask@who.int. This appeal request will be sent to the editor who originally handled your paper. We will discuss all appeals at an editorial meeting, and decide upon one of two potential courses of action, by consensus:

  1. Your appeal is upheld, and we agree to send your paper for further external review, (when necessary), and/or you are invited to revise your paper further. If your paper has already had one or more rounds of external peer review, we will require a revised manuscript that accounts for the reviewers' comments. In this case, you will receive a letter requesting you to upload a revised manuscript under the previous file number. Please note that a final decision will not have been made at this point regarding eventual publication, but your paper is back in the workflow for consideration.
  2. Your appeal is rejected, and the editor concerned will write you a letter explaining the reasons for this decision.

We generally only consider one appeal per paper, and you can increase your chances having your appeal upheld by supplying as much detail as possible in your request. We aim to let you know whether your appeal will be upheld or not, within four weeks of receipt of your letter.

Top 10 reasons for rejecting a manuscript

  1. Content of the paper not suitable for an international journal of public health.
  2. Design of the study not appropriate for the question asked.
  3. Lack of novelty and or timeliness.
  4. Lack of either or both ethical committee approval and informed consent.
  5. Lack of an appropriate search strategy.
  6. Conclusions not justified by the results.
  7. Lack of a feedback step in descriptions of audit.
  8. Insufficient sample size.
  9. Lack of a clear message to the public health community.
  10. Secondary analyses of demographic surveys or simple prevalence studies that are difficult to generalise.

Useful websites: