Publication rejection among ecologists

Few people enjoy rejection under any circumstances, but if you are a scientist and you receive a rejection letter from a journal, then, is it time to abandon research, or do all scientists experience such rejection to some degree? Here, we quantify the extent to which a sample of ecologists with the most successful publication careers has experienced manuscript rejection. We show that publication success and manuscript rejection are not strangers, and we hope that this will encourage ecologists (particularly research students) to continue submitting their studies for publication.