Editorial

pubs.acs.org/jpr

The Cover Letter

ublishing is the principal means by which scientific findings
P are communicated and confirmed to the broader
community. As I half-jokingly remind my lab, “If it isn’t
miss the significance of the work, then we can take steps to
make sure important points get noticed.
To sum up, your cover letter should be concise and should
published, it doesn’t exist.” Among the many steps in the path address:
to publication, if you are like most authors, the cover letter is 1. Why is the work important?
the last step in the process and, unfortunately, often the most (a) Does it make an important process faster, more
rushed and overlooked. Authors who underestimate the value sensitive?
of a strong cover letter often squander an opportunity to (b) Can you uncover new information that could not
delineate the value of their work, which can sometimes be measured before?
determine whether a manuscript is even sent for peer review. (c) Did you discover something new about a biological
See https://pubs.acs.org/sharingguidelines for options on how to legitimately share published articles.

Before digital submission of manuscripts became the norm, the process?

cover letter was attached to the front of the manuscript so that (d) Have you validated and verified the finding?
it was the first document an editor would read. A typical letter 2. What are the broader impacts of the research?
might include the title of the paper, verification that it has been 3. Who might be interested in the research?
Downloaded via 169.149.27.207 on August 2, 2019 at 01:52:07 (UTC).

submitted to only this journal, suggestions of appropriate 4. If you have talked to an editor and were encouraged to
reviewers for the paper, and, most importantly, information submit, then state this.
about the importance of the work and its relevance to the By providing a clearly written and concise cover letter, you
readership of the journal. Since much of the operational can give your manuscript the best possible chance for
information is now provided through checkboxes and other publication.
forms in the digital submission process, authors no longer feel Also see an Editorial by Jason H. Hafner, Associate Editor of
compelled to describe the work, making the cover letter more ACS Nano.
of an afterthought or a place where people reiterate the
information already provided in the submission process.
Even in the age of digital submissions, a good cover letter is
an effective tool, and the best letters will use plain language to
explain why the work is important, why it will interest the
readers of the journal, and thus why it should be published. The
cover letter is a golden opportunity to “sell” the science in your
paper to the editors handling the paper. Such clearly stated
letters are invaluable to editors who have the difficult task of
John R. Yates, III, Editor-in-Chief

■
deciding whether or not the paper is appropriate for the
journal. Without information from the authors, we must rely on
reviewers, who may or may not be good at identifying the AUTHOR INFORMATION
significance of the work, and when reviewers focus on technical Notes
issues in a manuscript rather than the scientific value of the Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not
findings, the evaluation of significance falls to the editors alone. necessarily the views of the ACS.
While technical quality or clarity in a paper can often be
improved in revision, significance is hard to improve without
additional experiments and insights; in essence, it is there or
not. Since there is an element of “in the eye of the beholder” as
to the significance of research, it behooves authors to clearly
spell it out. Without the guidance of the authors, an editor
might not appreciate the important advances offered by a paper.
Even if the significance is subtle, the paper may be worth
publishing, but without the insights provided in a cover letter,
editors might miss those points. We all have stories about a
paper that should have breezed through peer review but failed
because it did not resonate with reviewers or the research was
too far ahead of its time to be appreciated. My most highly
cited paper was rejected three times. The review process is not
infallible, and while we strive to be fair and believe the process
to be as objective as possible, there is, at times, some
inescapable subjectivity. A well-crafted and informative cover
letter can help the editor(s) be as well informed about the
research and its significance as possible, and thus if reviewers Published: January 5, 2017

© 2017 American Chemical Society 367 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jproteome.6b01068

J. Proteome Res. 2017, 16, 367−367