Paper rejections can be deeply unsettling, especially for junior academics. Healing the wounds of a rejection takes time. It involves going through several phases, including acknowledging the upsetting and frustrating dimensions of a paper rejection early on.

Although rejection is an incredibly common event for academics, it remains a taboo subject in academia. This invisibility of failure creates false expectations of immediate successes for early career researchers on the one hand, leading to a complete lack of confidence. On the other hand, seasoned academics used to receiving rejections may continue having great difficulty with rejections, the cumulative force of multiple rejections acting as a battering ram to their ability to function normally.