For €300 (list price €750) you are not buying a better submission than the €200 one: you are buying the managed cycle — up to three journals, with a complete package for the next one in less than a week after each rejection, plus help with the responses to reviewers in rounds 1 and 2, and with the signature always yours.
The Submission ends the day you upload the package. The Cycle begins to earn its keep exactly there: at the rejection, at the letter with no comments, and at the fourteen reviewer comments.
| The situation | With The Submission · €200 | With The Cycle · €300 |
|---|---|---|
| Journal no. 1 rejects you | The package is yours and serves as a basis, but the move to the next journal is not included | Included: the 2nd submission and the 3rd, at no extra cost and with nothing redone from scratch |
| The rejection arrives with no reviewer comments | You are left with the letter and with the doubt | Rapid diagnosis: what can be inferred from that letter, what cannot, and whether it changes the order of the list |
| You go through to review and 14 comments arrive | Not included | Help in rounds 1 and 2: point-by-point strategy and review of your draft. The writing and the signature are yours |
| The €0 route for the new journal | Verified for target no. 1, with a date | Re-verified journal by journal at every move — the quotas run out |
| You had already paid for The Submission | — | You move up by paying the difference: €100 (within 30 days) |
Founder prices, VAT included. List price in brackets.
This is the route after a desk rejection, reconstructed from the founding case. The written commitment is ‘less than a week’; here the new package is ready the next day, because the diagnosis does not force a rethink of the strategy.
| When | What happens | Who |
|---|---|---|
| Day 0 · morning | The editor's letter arrives: desk rejection, no reviewer comments. Not one line about the content | The author forwards it as it is |
| Day 0 · the same hours | Rapid diagnosis (1 page): what that letter really says, what it does not say, and whether the order of the list still holds | ViaJournal |
| Day 0 | Next destination: not ‘the next one on the list’ out of inertia, but the one that answers the signal in the rejection. It is proposed with the reasoning; the author decides | Proposed · the author decides |
| Day 0 | Re-verification of the €0 route for the new journal, as at that day's date (agreement, article type, quota) | ViaJournal |
| Day 0 → 1 | Full re-adaptation: new guide for authors, reference style, the relevant references from the new target, each with its reason and verified against Crossref, cover letter to the real editor of that journal, portal figures recounted from the document, and the documents the portal asks for and the guide does not | ViaJournal |
| Day 1 | Complete package delivered + upload checklist and per-tab prompts for the portal | Delivered · the author uploads it |
The route, in short: several clinical outcomes journals ✗ → diagnosis and change of family → methods journal (€0 route, CRUE-CSIC–Elsevier agreement ✓ 30-06-2026) ✗ desk rejection → the next day, a new package for the next journal in the methods family, with the €0 route re-verified.
An illustrative, anonymised reconstruction from a real case. The hour-by-hour granularity of the table is illustrative; what is verified are the coverage dates. Having the new package within a day is not acceptance: we promise process, never outcome.
Every journal is a different world in formatting, references and portal — all of that has to be redone in full. But the work you have already paid for once travels with you: by design, rejecting every change returns exactly your previous document.
| Redone at every move (and this is where the hours go) | Never redone again (it is already yours) |
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Real findings from the founding case; the split between the columns is the method's, not a promise that your manuscript carries the same problems.
A desk rejection brings no text to correct. Half the value lies in what can be deduced; the other half, in refusing to invent the rest and saying so in writing.
The letter, in full: ‘…after an initial assessment, the Editors have decided that your manuscript is not a good fit for the journal's scope and will not be sent for peer review.’ Not one comment more.
| What can be inferred | What CANNOT be inferred (and we are not going to pretend otherwise) |
|---|---|
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The decision that came out of it: instead of dropping in prestige within the same family, the manuscript moved one step across to the methods-and-informatics subtype, where the resource and its validation are the contribution. Not a single piece of data in the manuscript was touched: what changed were the destination, the framing of the cover letter, the formatting and the references for the new target.
Illustrative letter, rewritten from a real desk rejection. House rule: when the letter says nothing, we do not invent a reason for it — we change what the signal justifies and record the rest as a hypothesis.
The comments arrive and you have to answer point by point without sounding defensive or promising analyses you are not going to run. We hand you the strategy and comment on your draft; the science and the signature are yours.
| Reviewer's objection | Proposed response — a draft you decide on | Where the manuscript is touched | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| R2 · major ‘There is no clinical endpoint; the results do not support conclusions for care’ | Concede the framing, not the merit: this is a methods-and-resource study, and it was declared as such. Remove any wording that sounds like a clinical outcome | Methods, framing sentence · Discussion, limitations (new paragraph) · Abstract, one phrase removed | Low — it concedes nothing that was not already true |
| R1 · major ‘The corpus is in Spanish: does it generalise?’ | Defend, do not apologise: non-English resources are under-represented and that is the contribution. Support it with 2 references that document this, Crossref-verified | Introduction, final paragraph · Discussion, generalisability | Medium — defended without a citation it sounds defensive; with one, it does not |
| R2 · major ‘A comparison with method X is missing’ | Three routes, with their consequences: (a) the data exist → they are added; (b) they do not exist → say so and explain why it falls outside the scope; (c) promise a future analysis. We do not recommend (c) | The author decides: this is the only objection that touches the analysis | High — 100 % the author's decision; we do not give an opinion on the science here |
| R3 · minor ‘Inconsistent nomenclature between tables and text’ | Conceded and corrected without discussion | 6 points located and listed | None |
And on YOUR draft response, comments on tone and structure — the text remains yours:
«We strongly disagree with the reviewer's assertion, which misreads the study design.» «We thank the reviewer for raising this point. The study was designed as a methods-and-resource contribution; we have made this explicit in Section 2.1 and in the Limitations.» — the same position, without handing the editor a reason to close the door.
Where the line is: we do not write science, we do not write your responses in your name, we do not sign and we do not upload anything to the portal. We prepare the strategy, review what you write and verify the new references the reviewers ask for. The use of AI is declared in every deliverable, as the ICMJE recommends.
Illustrative objections and responses, built on the real objections anticipated in the strategy report for this case.
The Cycle has a written, checkable limit, and it is not ‘until publication’: that does not depend on us. If the case runs long, the extras are inexpensive and priced in advance.
| Item | Included in The Cycle · €300 | Beyond that |
|---|---|---|
| Submissions | Up to 3 journals: the first submission + 2 resubmissions if you are rejected, each with a new package in less than a week | Additional move (from the 4th submission): €100 per move (list price €200) |
| Reviewer rounds | Rounds 1 and 2, at any of those journals: strategy + review of your draft + new references verified | Additional round (3rd onwards): €40 per round (list price €90) |
| €0 route | Re-verified journal by journal at every submission, with source and date | Included in the extra moves as well |
| When it closes | When the 3 included submissions are used up, or earlier if you decide to stop | It does not close ‘on publication’: we do not control that and we do not sell it to you |
The hardest case, in numbers: 4 submissions and 3 rounds = €300 + €100 + €40 = €440. At the largest provider, the package that includes a second submission costs $912 and reaches 2 journals at most, with no €0 layer and no rejection diagnosis (provider prices checked on 2 Jul 2026).
The ladder: what you have already paid is deducted when you move up a stop within 30 days. The Strategy €100 → The Submission +€100 → The Cycle +€100. Starting at the bottom costs you nothing extra.