Cover Letter for Journal Submission

A cover letter for journal submission is a short letter addressed to the handling editor that accompanies a manuscript through a journal’s submission system. It is a separate document from the manuscript itself — most online submission systems (Editorial Manager, ScholarOne, and similar platforms) require it as its own upload alongside the manuscript file, title page, and any supplementary material. Its job is narrow but specific: it gives the editor, at the earliest possible screening stage, a concise case for why this manuscript belongs in this journal, plus the procedural confirmations (non-duplicate submission, conflict-of-interest disclosure) the journal needs on record before peer review can start.

What a cover letter is not

A cover letter is easy to confuse with three other, distinct documents in the submission-to-publication pipeline:

The abstract — a structured or unstructured summary of the study itself (background, methods, results, conclusions), written for readers of the published paper. A cover letter is written for one reader (the editor) and makes an argument (why publish this, here, now) rather than summarizing findings.
A letter to the editor — a short, peer-reviewed, citable, published article type (typically responding to or commenting on a previously published paper). A submission cover letter is never published and is not peer-reviewed; it is correspondence between the corresponding author and the editorial office.
A letter of support — a document from a collaborator, institution, or partner organization backing a grant proposal, unrelated to journal submission. See CASRAI’s letter of support guide for the grants-management equivalent.

What a cover letter typically needs to include

Requirements vary by journal and publisher (see the next section), but most cover letters for original research submissions cover the same core elements:

A statement of novelty and significance — in the author’s own words, not copied from the abstract: what the study found, why it matters, and why it fits this specific journal’s scope and readership. This is the part of the letter that actually does editorial work; everything else below is procedural.
Confirmation the manuscript is not under consideration elsewhere — a statement that the manuscript has not been published previously and is not simultaneously submitted to another journal. This maps directly to the ICMJE Recommendations on overlapping publications, which hold that submitting the same manuscript simultaneously to more than one journal risks duplicated peer-review effort and disputed publication rights, and that undisclosed duplicate submission is grounds for prompt rejection or, if discovered post-publication, retraction.
Conflict-of-interest disclosure, or a statement that none exists — many journals want a brief COI statement in the cover letter itself, in addition to (not instead of) the formal disclosure form submitted separately. See CASRAI’s guide to conflict of interest disclosure in scholarly publication and the Conflict of Interest (COI) in Research dictionary entry for what counts as financial and non-financial COI and how the ICMJE disclosure form works.
Suggested and/or excluded reviewers, where the journal’s instructions permit — some journals ask for this in the cover letter; many others collect it as a separate field in the online submission system, and some explicitly say it does not belong in the letter at all (see below). Always follow the specific journal’s author instructions rather than assuming one convention applies everywhere.
Confirmation that all authors have approved the submission — a brief statement that every listed author has seen and approved the manuscript and agrees to its submission, usually from the corresponding author.
Article type and any journal-specific context — the submission’s article type (research article, brief report, case study), and, if applicable, whether the corresponding author is responding to an editor’s prior invitation to submit, or noting a related manuscript under review elsewhere (e.g., a companion paper).

Cover-letter conventions genuinely differ by publisher — check the instructions

This is not a minor formatting detail; two major scholarly publishers give directly opposite guidance on one of the most common cover-letter elements. Elsevier’s author guidance states a cover letter “should not include funding information, author declarations, or suggested or opposed reviewers” — those are collected through separate fields in Elsevier’s submission system instead. Springer Nature’s guidance takes the opposite position, explicitly describing the cover letter as the place to “recommend or exclude reviewers (including the reasons why).” Because the two largest scholarly publishers disagree on this point, a template cover letter written for one publisher can be actively wrong for a submission to the other. Always check the target journal’s current “Guide for Authors” or submission instructions rather than reusing a cover letter template across journals unchanged.

Common mistakes

Restating the abstract instead of making the case for significance. This is the single most common and most avoidable cover-letter mistake. A letter that summarizes the study’s background, methods, and results the way an abstract does skips the one thing an editor actually needs from a cover letter at the desk-screening stage: an explicit, non-generic argument for why this manuscript fits this journal’s scope and importance bar right now. Editors read abstracts separately; a cover letter that repeats one, sometimes near-verbatim, wastes the space where that argument belongs.
Generic, journal-agnostic praise. A closing line like “we believe this work is a strong fit for your prestigious journal” that does not name a specific reason (a prior paper the study extends, a gap in the journal’s recent coverage, a readership the findings are directly relevant to) reads as boilerplate and does not help the fit argument above.
Omitting the non-duplicate-submission statement. Skipping this confirmation, or wording it ambiguously, can trigger extra editorial-office correspondence before peer review even begins, since it is one of the few cover-letter elements editors specifically check for at intake.
Including elements the journal explicitly says do not belong there (see the publisher-conventions section above) — for example, listing suggested reviewers in a cover letter submitted to a journal whose instructions route that information through a separate system field instead.
Sending a cover letter that does not name the correct editor or journal — a leftover artifact of reusing a template letter after a prior desk rejection at a different journal, which signals a lack of care at the first point of editorial contact.

A basic structure to follow

Absent journal-specific instructions to the contrary, a workable default structure is: (1) address the editor by name and identify the manuscript by working title and article type; (2) one paragraph stating what the study did and its central, specific finding — in the author’s own words, not the abstract’s; (3) one paragraph making the fit-and-significance case for this journal specifically; (4) the required procedural confirmations — non-duplicate submission, author approval, and conflict-of-interest disclosure (or a statement that none exists); (5) suggested/excluded reviewers, only if the journal’s instructions request them here; (6) a closing line identifying the corresponding author and contact details. Most journals expect this to run under one page.

Common questions

Is a cover letter required for every journal submission?

Most journals either require or strongly recommend one for original research submissions; requirements are typically listed in the journal’s “Guide for Authors” or “Instructions for Authors” page, which should always be checked before submission since exact expectations (length, required statements, reviewer-suggestion policy) vary by journal and publisher.

Does the cover letter get sent to peer reviewers?

No — the cover letter is correspondence between the corresponding author and the editorial office. It is used at the editorial desk-screening stage (to help an editor decide whether to send the manuscript out for review at all) and is not typically shared with peer reviewers, whose evaluation is based on the manuscript itself.

Do I need a new cover letter for a revised or resubmitted manuscript?

A revision submitted in response to reviewer comments is usually accompanied by a point-by-point response to reviewers rather than a fresh cover letter in the original sense. A manuscript resubmitted to a different journal after rejection elsewhere needs its own new cover letter addressed to the new journal and editor — not a reused copy of the original, which risks the “wrong journal name” mistake described above.

Should I suggest reviewers in the cover letter?

Only if the target journal’s submission instructions ask for it there. Some publishers (Springer Nature, per its own guidance) treat the cover letter as the place to recommend or exclude reviewers with reasons; others (Elsevier, per its own guidance) collect this through a separate submission-system field and explicitly say it does not belong in the letter. Check the specific journal rather than assuming either convention.