How to assess the probability of acceptance of your new neuropsychological manuscript.

Please do not change the peer-review process. Based on many years of experience with the submission process, I have constructed a scale for authors to assess for themselves the probability of acceptance of a neuropsychological manuscript. Positive scores increase the probability of acceptance and negative scores decrease it. Here I present the six most characteristic items of this scale: (1) Author’s opinion about the scientific value of the manuscript: of outstanding interest: put –100 of extremely limited interest: +100 A very enthusiastic opinion is sign of author’s serious neuropsychological immaturity. On the other hand, when the manuscript is actually ready to be published, the author is always fed up with it. Add a bonus of +10 points if the author finds his/her manuscript deadly boring. (2) Number of findings: a lot: –100 one or zero: +100 The referee is generally a very busy person. It is totally inappropriate to ask the referee to comment on a lot of findings. In that case, the response will be: ‘paper rather unfocused’, ‘inflation of type I error’, and the like. (3) Anticipation of the findings: no: –100 yes: +100 The answer is ‘no’ in case the findings of the study are awkwardly presented as a surprise. The answer is ‘yes’ when it is said that the study was specifically planned to test the hypothesis which corresponds to the findings. It is generally possible to say so, even when the author thinks that he/she knows that this is completely false. (4) The paper is about laterality: no: –100 yes: +100 In any case, whether or not the paper is on laterality, add a bonus of +10 points if there is a citation of the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (Oldfield, 1971). (5) The author personally knows at least one member of the editorial board: no: –100 yes, after some scientific meeting: 0 yes, after some social event: +100