Rejected from ACS Nano? The 7 Best Journals to Submit Next

ACS's Manuscript Transfer Service is the reason an ACS Nano rejection is often less of a dead end than a redirect. When an Associate Editor finds the work is sound but better suited elsewhere, the decision letter frequently includes a transfer offer.

Accepting it copies your coauthors, suggested reviewers, manuscript files, and submission answers into a new draft at the receiving journal, and if your paper was already peer reviewed, those reviews and reviewer identities travel with it. ACS reports that transferred manuscripts have a higher acceptance rate than the ACS average. Each journal stays editorially independent, so a transfer is not a guarantee, and the new journal's requirements may differ.

The three in-family options sit at different bars. Use this to pick the right ACS transfer target before you accept an offer or self-submit:

Source: ACS Manuscript Transfer Service and ACS journal author guidelines (accessed June 2026).

Map the offer (or your own next target) to the reason for rejection:

• Rejected because the nano advance was sound but not flagship-level. Step down inside the ACS family to ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (if the applied utility is the real story) or ACS Applied Nano Materials (if a nanomaterials specialty result is the contribution).

This is the most common ACS Nano cascade.

• Rejected because the result is striking but the manuscript is long and diffuse. Reframe the single most important finding as a short communication and target Nano Letters, which wants one result that stands powerfully alone.

• Rejected because the work is really broad materials science with a nano label. Go external to Advanced Materials or Small, where the materials consequence matters more than the nano identity.

• Rejected for fixable evidence gaps, not scope. Do the work first.

The same missing controls or thin characterization will be flagged at every peer-reviewed journal on this list.

If ACS Nano did not offer a transfer, you can still submit fresh to any of these. A self-initiated submission to ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces or ACS Applied Nano Materials does not carry the prior reviews, so address the original feedback before you send it.

In our pre-submission review work with ACS Nano submissions, the manuscripts that get rejected cluster into a small number of patterns that are visible from the figures and the Supporting Information long before reviewers weigh in. ACS Nano editors screen for the nano dimension being decisive and proven, and they reject early when it is not.

Naming the recurring triggers is the fastest way to decide whether your paper needs a different journal, more data, or just a sharper frame. Across our ACS Nano pre-submission reviews, these are the five we see most often, and each maps to a specific manuscript component you can check yourself.

Computational or design results without experimental validation. This is the named desk-rejection trigger at ACS Nano. When the central claim rests on simulation, structure prediction, or a device concept and the first figure does not show experimental confirmation, the Associate Editor often rejects within the 4-day median. We see this most when the abstract leads with a predicted property and the experimental section is thin.

The fix is to put the experimental validation in the main figures, not buried in the Supporting Information, and to connect the computation to a measured synthesis, characterization, or functional outcome before you resubmit.

Characterization that is broad but shallow. ACS Nano reviewers consistently flag manuscripts where multiple techniques are listed but each is applied superficially: XRD patterns without peak indexing, TEM images without scale bars or quantified size distributions, XPS spectra without chemical-state assignment. Breadth masking missing depth reads as an incomplete evidence package. Before resubmitting anywhere on this list, make every characterization figure self-auditable: a reviewer should be able to confirm the claim from the figure alone.

Asserted application significance instead of demonstrated function. ACS Nano expects functional claims to be measured, not inferred from structure. A paper that reports a new nanostructure with "potential applications" in sensing, energy storage, or biomedicine without an actual functional demonstration is a hypothesis paper to the editor, not an ACS Nano paper. If you cannot add a lab-scale functional measurement, that is a strong signal the paper belongs at ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces or ACS Applied Nano Materials rather than ACS Nano.

Missing controls and reproducibility evidence in the Supporting Information. Reviewers at ACS Nano routinely request expanded Supporting Information: replicate batches, statistical treatment of size distributions, stability data, and (for nanomedicine) toxicity controls. A Supporting Information file that lacks these is the most common revision trigger we see, and it is the same gap that will sink the paper at the next journal. Audit your SI for traceability from each main-text claim to the underlying control.

The nano dimension is decorative, not decisive. When the science would stand without the nanoscale framing, ACS Nano reads the work as general materials science wearing a nano label. The tell is an introduction that motivates the material broadly and only mentions the nanostructure as one of several features. If that describes your manuscript, the honest next step is a materials title (Advanced Materials, Small) where the broader consequence is the point, not a deeper nano framing that the data does not support.

These patterns are testable against your own draft. Run an ACS Nano characterization and validation readiness check to see which of them a reviewer would flag first.

Don't just blast the paper down the ladder, and know when to walk away from a second nano attempt. The most expensive mistake after an ACS Nano rejection is submitting the same evidence package to a lower-tier journal and getting rejected again weeks later. Some papers need real work, not a new address. Read the decision letter for what it actually says.

If the rejection cited scope or nanoscience priority and the science is sound, this is a reframing job, not new experiments: pick the right next venue and rewrite the framing for that journal's bar. If the rejection cited characterization gaps, missing controls, or weak functional proof, that is real work, and the same reviewers' concerns will reappear at ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, Nano Letters, or anywhere else. Generate the data first.

Be honest about the nano dimension. If reviewers told you the nanoscale aspect was not decisive, a materials journal is a better home than a stubborn second attempt at a nano flagship. And if ACS offered you a transfer, the path of least resistance is usually to accept it, because your files and any reviews carry over and transferred manuscripts clear the bar more often than fresh submissions.

This page was produced from ACS primary sources (the ACS Manuscript Transfer Service policy and ACS journal author guidelines), SciRev community-reported transit data, and the publicly stated scope and access terms of the Wiley, Springer Nature, and Nature Portfolio alternatives. The rejection patterns draw on Manusights pre-submission review work with ACS Nano-targeted manuscripts. Selectivity and APC figures are public-source estimates, not official journal-published rates, and editorial decisions remain journal-specific.