Manuscript
Clinical research group · several previous rejections · Affiliations: hospital + technical university (Catalonia)
✓ COVERAGE VERIFIED AS OF: 30-06-2026
Agreement coverage and quotas are verified as of the date shown and may change; they are re-verified at every submission.
Behavior Therapy (Elsevier, hybrid). A journal in the methods-and-behavioural family, where the paper's real profile (methods + clinical resource) stops being an objection and becomes the contribution. Expected cost to you: €0 — hybrid journal covered by the CRUE-CSIC–Elsevier agreement, subject to quota, through the team's university affiliation (verified 30 Jun 2026).
Each move comes with a fresh package in <1 week. Three of the four have a verified zero-cost route for your affiliations; the third is to be checked at submission (details and conditions: p. 3).
Who signs as corresponding author. APC coverage depends on the corresponding author's affiliation: with the university author (their university's agreements) the APC is covered on the Elsevier hybrid routes; with the hospital-based corresponding author, not necessarily. This is an administrative role change, not a change of scientific authorship.
The manuscript is a methods-and-resource paper submitted to clinical outcomes journals. In those venues, "no clinical endpoint / clinician-generated corpus / not in English" are fatal objections. In methods venues, all three turn neutral or become strengths. This is not a science problem: it is a destination problem. Detail: p. 2.
What the paper IS (through an editor's eyes): a methods study with a validated, reusable clinical resource — a clinician-generated corpus, in Spanish, with empirical validation. How it was being "sold": as a clinical outcomes study, competing in journals whose deciding criterion is the clinical endpoint this design does not have.
| Submission | Journal | Venue family | Outcome | Root cause (inferred from the pattern) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Journal of Affective Disorders | Clinical · outcomes | Rejected | The same venue profile twice: high-volume clinical journals that filter on clinical endpoints. The manuscript competes against trials and cohorts — it always loses, by design, not by quality. |
| 2 | Psychiatry Research | Clinical · outcomes | Rejected |
Moving up or down the ranking within the SAME journal family does not change the outcome: change the family. The paper must compete where its real contribution (method + resource) is the acceptance criterion. That reorders the destination list entirely — which is what p. 3 does.
None of this alters data, analyses or conclusions: it is presentation strategy. Every change is delivered as a tracked change and the author team approves them one by one.
| Tier | Journal | Publisher | 2-yr · h** | Affinity* | Cost route for YOUR affiliations | Fit note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🟢 | Behavior Therapy | Elsevier | 4,1 · 213 | #4 | €0 — hybrid covered, CRUE-CSIC–Elsevier agreement (quota applies) ✓ 30-06-2026 | Methods-and-behavioural family; the resource is a contribution, not a limitation |
| 🟢 | Behaviour Research and Therapy | Elsevier | 2,6 · 329 | #1 | €0 — same CRUE-CSIC–Elsevier route (hybrid) ✓ 30-06-2026; re-verify the quota at submission | Highest bibliographic affinity; higher editorial bar |
| 🟡 | Psychological Medicine | Cambridge UP | 4,5 · 331 | #13 | CSUC–Cambridge UP agreement — verify this journal's conditions at submission | Prestige generalist; requires a more clinical reframing |
| 🟡 | BJPsych Open | Cambridge UP | 0,7 · 73 | — | €0 — gold covered with a UPC corresponding author, CSUC–Cambridge UP agreement (quota applies) ✓ 29-06-2026 | Fast open access; the waterfall's safety net (0.7: lowered by its conference abstracts) |
| 🟠 | Clinical Psychological Science | SAGE | 3,5 · 100 | #5 | No agreement identified — subscription route (non-OA) as the zero-cost alternative | Strong conceptual fit; constrained by the cost route |
| 🔴 | Journal of Affective Disorders · Psychiatry Research | Elsevier | 4,5 · 307 / 4,2 · 251 | #12 · #6 | — | Already rejected: clinical outcomes family (see diagnosis) |
*Position in our system's bibliographic-affinity ranking (which journals publish the scientific conversation this manuscript cites?). **2-yr = 2-year mean citedness (an open metric, computed by OpenAlex) and h-index, source OpenAlex, retrieved 11 Jul 2026. The full report's matrix adds time to first decision where the journal publishes it and, when at least 20 comparable journals exist in the field, our own ViaJournal quartile; everything dated.
| Order | Destination | Why in this position | Plan B if desk-rejected |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Behavior Therapy | Fit + verified zero-cost route; bar reachable with the reframing | Go straight to 2 (the same reframing works) |
| 2 | Behaviour Research and Therapy | Highest affinity (#1); keeps the Elsevier zero-cost route | If the objection is scope → 4; if it is fit → 3 |
| 3 | Psychological Medicine | A step up to a prestige generalist; needs the clinical emphasis adjusted | 4 as the safety net |
| 4 | BJPsych Open | Covered OA (€0) — closes the cycle with a zero-cost route | — |
Adaptation checklist for Behavior Therapy: formatting and limits per the guide for authors · relevant venue references (Crossref-verified), each with its reason, approved by you one by one · abstract in the required format · cover letter to the real editor · tracked/clean versions · title page, highlights and declarations (incl. AI use) · an upload checklist so the team submits in minutes. — This is "The Submission"; this report is deducted in full.
Methodology and ethics (annex B of the full report): agentic system + expert human verification; every figure verified against a primary source with a date; agreements checked with the consortia (CSUC, CRUE-CSIC) and re-verified at every submission; aligned with ICMJE/COPE — we do not write science, AI use is disclosed, and the author team approves and performs the submission.