Will a journal reject my paper just because a grad student is the sole author?
Publishing paper does not necessarily need co-author and supervisor. However, it is strongly recommended. Having experienced co-author (not another unexperienced author) with couple of publications like your supervisor has several benefits, including:
- Your co-author reads paper and puts effort to make it more professional and mature for publication. He/she checks to ensure there is no mistake in technicality, presentation, and English.
- It gives more confidence to reviewers to ensure that what you did is scientifically correct and is also producible. Though rejection of papers with several experienced authors is also a very common issue.
In research, there are several small hints and tiny things to consider that can impact on the final results/outcomes of the research. If you submit without your supervisor/advisor's, particularly without his help and actual supervision, it is very likely to have those error.
In reality, research is very much complex, though it might look very simple. There are many many things to consider before undertaking research, reporting it, and even trying to submit it. Thus, your idea might not be yet ready for publication yet. Your supervisor may want to help you do not get a quick rejection that discourages you.
I don't think that exist any supervisor on the earth that avoid publishing paper unless there is either threat to its credit or the work is premature. Your supervisor may exaggerate on the quality of your work/paper though it is not yet mature enough to encourage you. So, if he admit that your paper is good, it is not 100% sure that your paper is ready to publish at the moment. Remember that your supervisor can see lots of other things that you cannot see in this stage.
So the bottom-line is that, try to further work on your idea and convince your supervisor that the paper is good and he -as a normal humankind- should be more than happy to co-author the paper with you since publication is one of the main KPIs for academicians across the globe.
As long as the article is good, it can be accepted, no matter how many authors are on the paper or whether you are a grad student or not. However, if your advisor does not want you to publish the paper, there might be some reasons. First, perhaps that the advisor is funding your research and that this research direction is not his priority. He perhaps think that other problem should be investigated. If you are paid by your advisor, then the advisor may need to do research related to that funding source. Second, although the idea may seem good, the advisor may see some problems in your idea and may think that it is not the most promising idea and that you should spend your time on something else. Writting a journal paper can take quite a lot of time.
Finally, I would recommend to not publish a paper by yourself while you are working under a specific supervisor. Your supervisor may be very angry if you do that, especially if you do that during time where you are paid by his funding or using the resources of his lab. I know several professors who were very angry when their student decide to submit papers without letting them know. A student should always ask the permission of his supervisor to submit a paper.
Also depends on how powerful is your supervisor. In my field, editors would be wary that a PhD student does a paper without PI supervision, and would avoid accepting to save their backs. Also this way they can prevent their students sending papers to others and getting an independent publication. Since
research all by myself, the idea, the experiment is original and without any help from my supervisor
- Are you sure you were legally allowed to those experiments?
- Your PI may claim later this experiment or organism (like bacterial sequence or gene) was not declared in the list of approved experiments.
- Even the mere fact that he/she funded the resources and consumables for the experiment gives your PI right towards claiming authorship.
- Since research faculties are filled with people with enough pride (and ego) your PI may also be very annoyed with her/his standing in your institution.
- Finally, if you are looking for a postdoc/academic position later in your life - just do NOT do it. They will make it impossible.