Evaluation of the quality and subsequent performance of manuscripts rejected by Clinical Rheumatology: a research report.

Research report quality is an area for improvement, mainly for items critical to explaining the research and findings. The use of reporting guidelines should be encouraged by journals. Key Points • The quality of research reports (in rejected manuscripts) is insufficient. • Guidelines for reporting are seldom used in rejected manuscripts. • A manuscript rejected by Clinical Rheumatology may subsequently be published in another journal with a lower impact factor and have fewer citations and less social media attention than accepted manuscripts.