Even if you're not a baseball fan, you've probably heard of a no-hitter. When a pitcher throws a no-hitter, he or she has gone a complete game without allowing the other team to get a hit. You don't have to know the details to guess that this is an impressive accomplishment. But it's trivial compared to the achievement of pitching a perfect game.

When you pitch a perfect game, you go the entire game without letting a single batter even reach base. In fact, you can pitch a no-hitter while allowing lots of baserunners (by walking them, for example), and you can even pitch a no-hitter while losing the game (4-0, in the case of the unfortunate Andy Hawkins a few decades ago). But a perfect game means no one reaches base. It's nearly impossible to do this: 21 perfect games have been pitched in Major League Baseball since 1900, and there have been many tens of thousands of games played since then (currently almost 2,500 in every season).

In 2010, Armando Galarraga, a pitcher with the Detroit Tigers, pitched a perfect game. Except he didn't get credit for it. That's because an umpire made a mistake. A batter was ruled safe, incorrectly, on the very last play of the game. That batter was credited with a hit. The next batter was out, but the final official result was that Galarraga was credited with a one-hit shutout.

In other words, he didn't even get a no-hitter.

That the mistake occurred on the last play of the game is a melodramatic twist so absurd that it could only have happened in real life. The two people most involved—Galarraga and umpire Jim Joyce—both exhibited extraordinary kindness and grace in the aftermath of the play. It's really a great story.

But it's also frustrating. In 2010, there was no way for anyone to stop the game and offer helpful new information so that the umpire would have the opportunity to say, "Oh, I see now that the runner is out. Please credit that guy over there with a perfect game." There was no instant replay. No appeal. No umpire monitoring the video to check for mistakes. (There is now, since 2013.)

Review and assessment of papers at Cell Reports is different from baseball in some pretty important ways—most of my colleagues, for example, don't seem to be very interested in baseball. (Their loss.) One big difference is that we at Cell Reports, along with our colleagues at all other Cell Press journals, have always been open to new information. We have a specific process for appealing a decision, and we are much more open to changing our decisions than baseball umpires seem to be. If an author thinks that an editor or reviewer is ruining a perfect game, we will listen carefully. And sometimes, when the new information is clear and compelling, we change our decisions.

The process is usually called "rebuttal," sometimes an "‘appeal." I don't care for either term, since both bring to mind courtrooms and lawyers and stuff like that, but those are the terms I will use here. Here are some recommendations and ideas for authors who want us to reconsider a decision.

1. Provide new information or at least a new perspective

This is the most important expectation of a rebuttal. At Cell Reports, more than half of our submissions are rejected without review based on criteria that include conceptual advance, physiological relevance, depth of new insight (including mechanistic insight), breadth of potential interest, and topical scope. A successful appeal of this kind of rejection really requires something new.

The best appeals suggest new experiments or approaches. Others provide new perspectives on why the findings might be of greater interest than the editor suggests. Still others add comparisons to recent publications in Cell Reports or similar journals or cite papers that illustrate some point about relevance or advance. Successful appeals often combine these strategies. But they all have this in common: they provide new details, or new approaches, and thus change the conversation about the paper.

If your paper has been rejected after review, the situation is only slightly different. It's still important to provide new information, but now the focus must be specifically on the concerns of the reviewers. The new information might involve new planned experiments, new analyses, or plans for discussion of confusing or disputed points. And some of the new information might be a bit like baseball instant replay: showing that a reviewer or editor is mistaken in one or more of their conclusions.

2. Treat the appeal as a discussion among scientists instead of a legal dispute

Consider the audience to be colleagues, not judges. We work hard to keep that mindset at Cell Reports, and I think it will help any author preparing an appeal of a decision.

3. Be clear and concise

Get right to the point. Avoid repeating unnecessary phrases. It's fine to thank the editor and/or reviewers for their work, but do this once and then get right to the main issues. The words you spend discussing the biases of Reviewer 3, and speculating on her/his identity, are far better spent carefully discussing your scientific responses to his/her specific points.

If the appeal requires extensive technical discussion, include a brief summary that explains the issue and how you're addressing it. Help the editor and/or reviewers to quickly understand how you are dealing with the problems or concerns that have been raised.

4. Be professional and respectful

Of course I don't need to tell you this, but maybe one of your friends or students needs to hear it. Your appeal should exhibit the professional respect that you expect to receive from your colleagues. If you're sure you've been robbed of a perfect game, it's completely understandable that you would be upset, even outraged. (Amazingly, Armando Galarraga never was, but that seems an unreasonably high expectation. I know I couldn't meet it.)

Give yourself some time to think—responding the same day is almost always a bad idea. Gather with your coauthors and colleagues, and after you've vented a bit, write a response that expresses your respect for the hardworking editors and reviewers who've assessed your work. If it helps, consider that the editors at Cell Reports are eager to read your responses and that we rejoice when an appeal is successful. Seriously, I wish you could be at an editorial meeting when we discuss appeals. When a rejection decision is reversed, the collective response is always, “Oh, good!"

You may be wondering what we do when we receive an obnoxious rebuttal. Well, we read it anyway. We try to discern if there is an actual appeal embedded in the denunciations. If there is, we return the rebuttal to your colleague and instruct them to rewrite it so that it can be assessed properly. This always does the trick. If there is no real appeal there, we just politely decline.

5. Ask a colleague outside your immediate area to give you advice

This person might help you with language or tone or clarity, and they might even help you focus on the scientific issues without being too emotional.

6. Consult the editor when you have a specific question

If there is something about the decision that you don't understand, ask for clarification. A quick email might make your rebuttal more effective.

7. Consider whether an appeal is a good use of everyone's time

Take some time to ponder the editor's or reviewer's comments—preferably at least a day of thought and conversation with your coauthors. We rarely receive a convincing or effective appeal less than two hours after sending the decision. Once you're a day removed from the disappointment, you may decide that the concerns raised are valid, and that it might be better to submit to another journal and see the paper published more quickly.

At Cell Reports and all through Cell Press, we do have instant replay. We regularly reconsider decisions, and we sometimes reverse a decision that seemed at the time to be etched in stone. We don't often see a scientist pitch a perfect game, but we're always ready to look at the replay. Every now and then, after looking at the tape again, we call the runner out and congratulate the pitcher on an amazing accomplishment. Those are great days when that happens.