Lesson 4 of 30 · Is your research publishable?

Know the work you have to beat

Every review scores novelty, and novelty is not "nobody has done exactly this". It is "what do you add that the closest existing work does not". Reviewers are chosen because they know that adjacent work, so they arrive already comparing you to it. If you have not named the three closest results and what each leaves open, they will, and not in your favor.

The move is to write, for each, one sentence on what it establishes and one on what it leaves open that you close. Done honestly this does one of two things: it sharpens your contribution into something defensible, or it exposes that your gap is thinner than you thought, while you can still act on it.

The expensive version of this discovery is a reviewer writing "this largely replicates Smith et al." after you have built an entire discussion around a contribution that was not there.

Your move

Identify the three closest published results to your claim. For each, write one sentence on what it establishes and one on what it leaves open that you will close.

Why: Positioning against current work is a scored dimension in every review. Practicing it now teaches you to see your own contribution the way a reviewer will, and it is far cheaper to find an overlap here than after you have written a discussion around it.

Worked example

Reviewers reach for the closest competing paper first. If you have not cited it and said plainly what you do that it does not, they assume you either missed it or are hiding from it. Both read as a reject.

The pattern that loses papers here

A related-work section that lists citations but never says, in plain words, what you add that the closest paper lacks. The reader cannot locate your contribution.

Check it against your draft

Name the single closest competing paper
State in one line what you add that it lacks
No key recent paper in your area is missing

Quick check

2 questions, to catch the misconceptions this lesson exists to fix.

1.In a review, "novelty" means:
2.Listing the three closest papers is enough, even without saying what each leaves open.

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.