The hard truth about how hard it is to publish in Development
Posted by the Node, on 20 January 2026
[Editorial from Development by James Briscoe, Swathi Arur, Anna Bigas, Dominique Bergmann, Benoit G. Bruneau, Cassandra G. Extavour, Paul François, Anna-Katerina Hadjantonakis, Haruhiko Koseki, Thomas Lecuit, Matthias Lutolf, Irene Miguel-Aliaga, Samantha A. Morris, Kenneth D. Poss, Elizabeth J. Robertson, Peter Rugg-Gunn, Debra L. Silver, James M. A. Turner, James M. Wells, Steve Wilson.]
Every researcher knows the anticipation and trepidation that come with submitting a paper to a journal. Years of effort have been distilled into a few thousand words and a handful of figures containing the metaphorical (and often literal) sweat from long hours and hard toil in the lab. What will the reviewers say? How will the editor deal with it? At Development, we understand the anxiety and the investment that goes with a paper submission. Our mission is to provide the kind of expert, constructive review that not only evaluates your work but helps it achieve its full potential for lasting scientific impact. But we know that the comments provided by reviewers don’t always live up to this expectation. We’ve heard the concerns. Some of these frustrations reflect deeper, systemic issues across scientific publishing: the feeling that revision requests can expand beyond what is feasible, that editorial decisions are not always transparent, and that standards can seem uneven across subfields such as developmental and stem cell biology. These are not challenges unique to Development, but we acknowledge them and continue to refine our editorial practices to address them wherever possible.
We’ve been told that Development is ‘too hard to publish in’, that reviews are unnecessarily harsh, that revisions are excessive and time-consuming. These criticisms matter to us. Even though sometimes it might be more perception than reality, we won’t pretend that there isn’t some truth in these criticisms. As active research scientists ourselves, we Editors face similar frustrations with our own papers. We want to be transparent about Development’s reviewing process and explain how we endeavour to get the balance right so that it serves both authors and the scientific community.
First, the numbers behind the perception. The bottom line is that, for the past 10 years, 35-45% of papers submitted to Development ultimately get published. Let us break this down. Roughly 65% of the manuscripts submitted to Development are sent out for peer review. We only editorially reject papers when the topic of the article is beyond our scope and expertise, or it is clear to us that the study would not be supported by our peer reviewers. A rapid rejection allows authors to quickly redirect their manuscript to more appropriate venues and, where relevant, we facilitate direct transfers to our sister journal, Biology Open. Of the papers we send for peer review, well over 50% receive positive reviews from reviewers and we ask the authors to revise and resubmit these…
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