Microbial Cell acknowledges that excellent manuscripts may be rejected from other high-impact journals after having been revised. That is why, through its Fast Track option, Microbial Cell offers authors of such manuscripts the possibility to submit their paper together with the anonymous referee reports obtained upon rejection in another journal. Usually, the authors add a rebuttal letter and provide a revised version of their previously submitted manuscript. Using this Fast Track option, a handling editor will take the previous reviews and your possible amendments into account to make a fast decision. Note, that in some cases the editor may choose to take advice from an additional referee. Of course, authors are welcome to submit their rejected paper to Microbial Cell afresh without reference to the previous process – in that case, please proceed with a regular submission.

If you want to proceed with a Fast Track submission, prepare your files as described below and submit through our submission system. Please mention in your Cover Letter that you are submitting via the Fast Track option and upload the referee reports and the rebuttal letter as “Supporting Files” in our submission system.

Submission file preparation

(1) Please consult the chapter Manuscript Preparation to get your manuscript ready for submission.

(2) Generate a PDF file containing the main text (title through figure legends) and the main figures as outlined here.

(3) If you are also submitting supplemental material, please refer to the chapter Supplemental Data. Supplemental material should be provided separately as a composite PDF file with embedded figures.

(4) Please provide the cover letter, the referee reports and the corresponding point-by-point reply as single documents (MS Word or PDF format). Please upload them as “Supporting Files” in our submission system