Congratulations! Your manuscript has been rejected.

Has there ever been a moment in history when publication rejection was so easy to stomach? Have authors ever been presented with so many attractive alternatives to having their work appear in an established publication?

As a regular part of promoting my publishing consultancy, I write opinion pieces and submit them to various journals. It’s not a weekly or even monthly endeavor, but it has provided an opportunity to not only communicate to potential clients, but perhaps more importantly, to experience the other side of the editorial coin. Certainly, rejection still stings, but a lot less given that my options now include publishing the article on my web site, this blog, and my blog on FOLIO. I can also promote the article via any number of social networking sites and Twitter updates, rather than passively handing that role over to a publisher.

In fact, if my goal is to achieve the largest number of potential readers, my self distribution via the web casts a far wider net than the circulation of the publication to which I had submitted the work originally. It must mean something that upon receiving my latest “We regret…”, I was actually fairly relieved. It gave me the freedom to distribute the piece to an audience to which I have grown increasingly familiar, and enables me to make timely edits on a continual basis.

One wonders if this will eventually become the model for the publication of scientific research? The next step beyond open access will presumably be for academic departments or individuals to simply self-publish rather than submit to an open access site (eg, PLoS). Naturally, some of the benefits of formal 3rd-party publication are intangible, and perceptions within the scientific community would have to change. However, if authors, journalists and commentators have accepted the blog as a reputable medium, I imagine that the STM community might not be far behind.