Lesson 12 of 30 · Insider moves most researchers miss

Pre-submission inquiries: ask before you spend the months

For the most selective journals, you do not have to guess whether your paper is in scope. You can ask. A pre-submission inquiry is a short email to the editor, a few sentences on what you found and why it fits their journal, sent before you build the full submission. A good editor will tell you, often within days, whether it is worth submitting or whether you would be wasting both your time.

This matters because the highest-tier journals reject most papers at the desk, on scope and significance, before a reviewer sees them. If your paper is genuinely borderline for a journal like that, a two-paragraph inquiry can save you the weeks of formatting and the month of waiting that a doomed submission costs. And a warm reply, while never a promise, tells you the editor is at least interested, which is real information.

Do it well and it helps; do it wrong and it annoys. Keep it to a short paragraph: the finding in one sentence, why it matters, why it fits this specific journal. Do not attach the whole manuscript, do not send it to five journals at once, and do not use it for a journal where you are clearly in scope, where it just adds a step. Reserve it for the reach journals where scope is the real question.

Your move

Write the pre-submission inquiry you would send to your top-choice journal: one paragraph, no more. The finding in a sentence, why it matters now, why it fits this journal specifically. Even if you never send it, writing it forces the scope-and-significance case you will need anyway.

Why: A short inquiry can save you a month on a paper that was never in scope, and a warm reply is real signal from the person who makes the decision. Almost no one uses this, because no one tells them they can.

Worked example

A researcher spent six weeks formatting a paper for a top journal, waited a month, and got a one-line desk rejection on scope. A two-paragraph inquiry beforehand would have drawn the same answer in two days, and freed those weeks for the journal that actually wanted it.

The pattern that loses papers here

Building and submitting a full manuscript to a reach journal without asking whether it is in scope, then losing weeks to a desk rejection a short inquiry would have surfaced in days. Or the opposite: a bloated inquiry with the whole paper attached that no editor will read.

Check it against your draft

You reserved the inquiry for a reach journal where scope is the real question
It is one short paragraph: finding, significance, fit, nothing attached
You are sending it to one journal, not blasting several

Write your answer and keep it

Reading is free and always will be. An account is what lets you write your own answer to this move, get it read back to you, and keep everything you build as you go.