The small levers most people skip

Beyond the big moves are a handful of small levers that cost minutes and quietly improve your odds, and almost every one of them is left on the table by researchers who do not know they exist.

Suggest reviewers, and suggest well. Most journals let you name preferred and non-preferred reviewers, and a thoughtful list of genuine experts who are not your close collaborators both speeds up review and steers it toward people who will understand your work. The exclude field is just as useful for a known competitor with a conflict. Mind the timing too: editors and reviewers are human, and a submission that lands the week before a major holiday or conference often sits longer, so if you have a choice, avoid the dead weeks.

Two more. When a journal rejects you but offers to transfer the paper to a sister journal in the same publisher family, that offer usually carries your reviews with it and skips you past the desk at the new journal, which can save months, so read those emails carefully rather than deleting them. And prepare the boring metadata before you open the portal: your ORCID, the data-availability statement, the funding and conflict declarations, and the suggested-reviewer list, because assembling them mid-submission is where people make the errors that trigger an administrative desk rejection.