Rejected from Journal of Alloys and Compounds? Where Next

Use this table to choose by rejection reason, not by prestige order.

The JAC decision letter should tell you whether to move quickly, transfer, appeal, or fix first.

Elsevier's appeals policy is important here. Appeals are for peer-reviewed manuscripts and will not be considered for papers rejected outright by the editorial team. If JAC rejected the paper at desk, the faster path is almost always rerouting or revising, not appeal.

Elsevier's Transfer Your Manuscript service is designed to help rejected manuscripts move to a more appropriate Elsevier journal. It can smooth file transfer and reduce administrative work, but it does not rewrite the manuscript's argument.

Accept a transfer when:

• the suggested journal clearly matches the manuscript's center of gravity
• the rejection reason was fit, selectivity, or article shape rather than missing evidence
• the manuscript already has a clean abstract, figures, data statement, and cover-letter rationale for the new target

Decline or pause when:

• the suggested journal is only adjacent by keyword
• the decision letter identified missing characterization, weak benchmarks, or unsupported claims
• the new venue would require a different article length, emphasis, or application framing

For a JAC paper, the transfer route is most useful when the manuscript is credible but too narrow, too short, or too application-specific for the original target. It is least useful when the science package itself is incomplete.

Across our Journal of Alloys and Compounds pre-submission and post-decision review work, the same four patterns decide whether the next submission succeeds.

Characterization report without a structure-property thesis. The manuscript has XRD, SEM/TEM, EDS, hardness, corrosion, magnetic, thermal, or electrochemical measurements, but the paper never states the governing materials idea. JAC needs more than "we synthesized and characterized." The abstract, benchmark table, and main figure should prove how composition or processing controls a property that matters. Check whether your JAC paper has a real structure-property thesis →

Benchmark table too weak for the property claim. We see this when authors claim improved hardness, corrosion resistance, hydrogen-storage capacity, thermoelectric behavior, magnetic response, catalytic activity, or electrochemical stability without comparing against close alloys or compounds under comparable conditions. The next journal will not infer superiority from isolated numbers. Check whether your benchmark table is strong enough →

Phase or microstructure evidence does not support the mechanism. A reviewer can accept that a property changed and still reject the causal explanation. This happens when phase purity, crystallinity, grain size, intermetallic formation, interface structure, defect chemistry, or thermodynamic stability is asserted from incomplete evidence. The fix is not more prose; it is the figure, table, or supplementary analysis that supports the mechanism. Check your phase and microstructure evidence →

Application framing stronger than the data. Many JAC rejections start with a paper that calls the alloy promising for energy storage, hydrogen, corrosion protection, structural service, thermoelectrics, or magnetic applications without testing the operating condition that would make the claim credible. In our analysis of JAC-targeted manuscripts, the fastest recovery comes from narrowing the application claim to what the data actually prove, then choosing a journal whose reviewers value that level of evidence.

The common thread is that JAC rejection is usually not solved by changing the journal name. The next submission succeeds when the title, abstract, main figure, benchmark table, methods, and cover letter all say the same thing about the material's contribution.

Usually, no.

Elsevier's appeals policy says appeal requests must be written to the journal with the word "Appeal" and the manuscript reference number in the subject line. It also says appeals are considered only for manuscripts that have been peer reviewed and not for manuscripts rejected outright by the journal editorial team.

That makes the practical rule simple: appeal only if JAC sent the manuscript to peer review and the rejection contains a clear factual or procedural error. If the rejection was desk-level fit, novelty, or evidence-package judgment, use the decision as routing data.

In the next 72 hours, do three things. First, classify the rejection reason as scope, benchmark weakness, characterization gap, application overclaim, or article-shape mismatch. Second, choose one next route: JAC Communications for close-sibling fit, Intermetallics for intermetallic depth, Materials Letters for a concise finding, Materials Chemistry and Physics for physical-property characterization, or fix-first if evidence is missing. Third, rewrite the abstract, benchmark table, and cover letter before touching formatting.