Rejected from Remote Sensing of Environment? Choose the Next Journal

RSE describes its scope around advances in remote-sensing theory, science, applications, and technology, with biophysical and quantitative emphasis across terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric sensing. The routing question is therefore not simply whether the paper uses satellite data. It is what the paper advances and whether the validation supports that advance.

Record whether each concern changes the method, validation, map product, environmental claim, or audience. Those are different routing axes.

Check whether the rejection reflects journal fit or a portable validation problem before choosing another destination.

A desk rejection often means that the manuscript reads as an application of remote sensing rather than an advance in remote-sensing science. That can still be valuable. A domain or application journal may reach the users who need the result.

A rejection after peer review provides evidence about model design, reference data, leakage, uncertainty, comparison fairness, generalization, and interpretation. These concerns should be addressed before moving because the next expert reviewer can reproduce the same critique from the methods and figures.

An Article Transfer Service offer can move a rejected submission to another Elsevier journal. The receiving editors independently assess it, and authors may have an opportunity to revise. Use the route only when the destination's aims and recent papers fit the manuscript after those revisions.

ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing

Best for: substantial advances in photogrammetry, image analysis, 3D reconstruction, computer vision, geospatial learning, and remote-sensing methodology. It can fit a paper whose technical contribution is stronger than its environmental storyline.

Think twice if: the method is a standard architecture applied to a new region or dataset. ISPRS still expects methodological importance and fair evaluation. Show ablations, cross-dataset validation, computational tradeoffs, uncertainty, and comparison under aligned protocols.

IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing

Best for: sensor systems, calibration, retrieval, signal processing, inversion, radar, hyperspectral methods, and technically rigorous algorithms. It is plausible when engineering novelty and measurement performance are the durable contribution.

Think twice if: the manuscript's real value is an ecological, agricultural, climate, or policy application. A technical journal will inspect equations, assumptions, baselines, complexity, and reproducibility. Reframe only if those are genuinely central.

International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation

Best for: applications of Earth observation that produce a clear scientific, geographic, operational, or management outcome. Regional work can fit when it demonstrates a transferable method or a meaningful decision product.

Think twice if: the paper is a map plus accuracy table without a defensible use, uncertainty analysis, or external validation. Applied does not mean unvalidated. Explain who uses the output, what decision it informs, and where it may fail.

Science of Remote Sensing

Best for: broad open-access work across remote-sensing science and applications, including data science, mechanistic modeling, training and validation, sensors, and Earth-system themes. It is a direct family route when the paper remains scientifically substantial.

Think twice if: the RSE decision identifies data leakage, weak labels, unfair baselines, or unsupported scale transfer. A publisher-family transfer does not lower the need to repair those issues, and the receiving editor makes an independent decision.

Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment

Best for: remote-sensing work whose strongest value is practical application, societal use, environmental monitoring, regional planning, hazards, resources, or implementation. It can be more native than RSE for context-specific but decision-relevant studies.

Think twice if: the manuscript does not identify a user, decision, or consequence. Application language added to the Discussion will not compensate for a paper that is actually a technical method study.

Ecological Indicators

Best for: studies where remotely sensed variables become ecological indicators used for assessment, monitoring, management, restoration, biodiversity, ecosystem condition, or policy. The environmental inference should be the paper's center.

Think twice if: the indicator lacks field validation, uncertainty, ecological interpretation, or a clear relationship to management. If the main contribution is sensor fusion or model architecture, a remote-sensing methods journal is cleaner.

Build this evidence ledger before choosing a journal:

Write the claim as: "Under these sensors, regions, dates, labels, and validation conditions, the method establishes...." Anything outside that sentence needs separate evidence.

Repair the evidence chain across the manuscript:

1. Title and abstract: name the product, scale, sensor, geography, and validation boundary. Remove universal language unsupported by the test set.
2. Data and methods: document reference data, preprocessing, spatial and temporal splits, missingness, cloud handling, resolution, and leakage controls.
3. Baselines and ablations: align training data, metrics, tuning effort, resolution, and supervision. Isolate which component creates the gain.
4. Validation: add independent geography, time, sensor, or field measurements when the claim requires transfer. Report uncertainty and failure cases.
5. Figures and maps: show scale, legends, uncertainty, and representative errors. Do not use visually smooth maps to hide sparse validation.
6. Results and statistics: report more than one aggregate score. Include class, region, season, condition, and calibration performance where relevant.
7. Discussion: separate retrieval accuracy from environmental process, causality, and management implication.
8. Data availability and reproducibility: expose code, trained models, split definitions, labels, and access constraints.
9. Cover letter: state why the revised method or application belongs to the destination's readers.

Audit the remote-sensing validation chain before selecting the next journal.

Use Elsevier's Article Transfer Service when the suggested destination fits the revised manuscript and transfer saves useful administrative work. The offer may come from an editor, scientific editor, or matching process; it is not an acceptance signal. Compare the recommendation with society and external journals.

Appeal only when a specific factual or procedural error could change the result. A disagreement about novelty, scope, priority, or reviewer judgment is generally a routing problem. Follow the current appeals policy and decision letter. While an appeal is active, do not submit to another journal or begin a parallel or simultaneous transfer.

Choose a fresh submission when the right audience is outside the Elsevier network, when the manuscript needs substantial reconstruction, or when the transferred version would expose unresolved problems before revision.

Across our Remote Sensing of Environment pre-submission reviews, three failure patterns repeatedly shape the post-rejection route.

Pattern 1: Remote Sensing of Environment validation leaks across space or time

Random pixel splits can place nearby observations, repeated acquisitions, or the same environmental regime in training and test sets. The reported accuracy then measures interpolation rather than transfer. We audit the methods, split code, sampling units, temporal windows, and maps to identify dependence. The revised manuscript uses spatial blocks, temporal holdouts, sensor holdouts, or an external region as appropriate. Until that is fixed, moving to another journal only exports the leakage problem.

Pattern 2: Remote Sensing of Environment baseline gains come from protocol differences

A new model may use higher-resolution inputs, more labels, extra pretraining, stronger augmentation, or more tuning than the comparison methods. The results table attributes the gain to architecture even though the protocol changed. We compare data, supervision, parameter budget, preprocessing, metrics, and tuning across baselines, then add controlled ablations. This determines whether the paper belongs in a methods journal or should be reframed as an application study.

Pattern 3: Remote Sensing of Environment environmental claims outrun the remote-sensing product

The model may estimate a variable accurately under tested conditions, but the Discussion infers ecosystem process, causal drivers, policy benefit, or operational reliability. We trace each claim to field validation, uncertainty, scale, season, geography, and known failure modes. Unsupported inference is narrowed. The destination is selected from the demonstrated product and user, not from the broadest environmental narrative.

These patterns are visible in the abstract, methods, figures, maps, controls, statistical analysis, supplementary material, and data availability statement. They are portable across journals.

We also inspect whether uncertainty is usable at the scale of the claimed application. Pixel-level error, regional aggregate error, temporal stability, and decision-threshold error are not interchangeable. A paper can report a strong global metric while failing in the locations or classes that matter most. The revised figures and tables expose that distribution, and the next journal is chosen according to whether the contribution is methodological, environmental, or operational.

Before resubmitting, confirm that:

• the destination publishes the paper's actual contribution type;
• training and test independence are defensible;
• baseline comparisons use aligned protocols;
• uncertainty and failure cases are visible;
• environmental and operational claims stay inside the validation boundary;
• every major reviewer concern is fixed or explicitly limited.

Run a Remote Sensing of Environment post-rejection review, then verify the destination's current scope and author instructions.