Journal rejection and acceptance rates

["Ken Masters" <kmasters@ithealthed.com>]

Hi All

I'd like to ask several questions about a topic that rears its 
head from time to time on this group, but doesn't always appear 
to be dealt with in detail: journal rejection and acceptance 
rates.

1.Why are rejection rates advertised as some measure of quality 
- or at least they seem to be, when advertised and discussed on 
discussion groups?  (I can understand the logic of the argument 
to a limited extent, but it means that a journal with a 100% 
rejection rate is the best of its type in the world.)

2.Similarly, given that a paper can be rejected for many 
different reasons and that rejection rates are affected by a wide 
range of factors, mostly due to (variable) editorial policies 
(physical space, plagiarism, inappropriate subject (too specific, 
not directly related, etc), withdrawal by the authors, number of 
revisions required, number of reviewers' rejections required for 
a rejection of the paper, whether or not reviewers are anonymous, 
number of invited papers, etc), why does quality seem to be the 
only thing implied when people discuss rejection rates?

3.When journals publish (actually, advertise) their rejection 
rates, why do they not routinely break down their rejection by 
cause?

4.Given that journals with a high rejection rates tend to also 
receive a large number of low-quality papers, there is a point at 
which the rejection rate become self-inflating and even less 
related to quality. What is that point?

5.In my experience as a reviewer, I have seen many good papers 
rejected because of lack of physical space, and some journals 
make this point on their websites.  If space is a problem with 
paper-based journals, and not a problem with online journals, 
then, all other things being equal, doesn't it stand to reason 
that paper-based journals will almost always have a higher 
rejection rate than online journals?  Again, if there were a 
breakdown of reasons for rejection, this would help to clarify 
the discussion.

6.If a rejection rate is to be some measure of quality, then what 
is the optimum rejection rate?

7.Given that, when comparing percentages, the statistics for 
_anything_ don't mean significance unless you know the raw 
figures, does it even vaguely make sense to say that one journal 
has rejection rate of X% and another has a rejection rate of Y% 
unless you also cite the raw data?

8.Are rejection rates _ever_ externally audited and verified, the 
way that the publishers' financial books are audited and 
verified?  If not, shouldn't they be, given the tendency to 
equate quality with rejection rate?

9.Is there any universal method of calculating acceptance rates? 
e.g. if a journal has received 100 papers, 20 of which have been 
rejected, 30 accepted, and 50 are still under review.  Is this an 
acceptance rate of 30/50 = 60% or an acceptance rate of 30/100 = 
30%?  How are withdrawals factored into this?

And this doesn't cover the issue of differences in rejection 
rates across disciplines.

Disclaimer: I'm EiC of an open-access online journal, and one of 
the stated aims is to _publish_ rather than reject.  My reviewers 
are encouraged to advise authors on how they can improve their 
papers in order to get it to publishing level.

Regards

Ken

Dr. Ken Masters
Asst. Professor: Medical Informatics
Medical Education Unit
College of Medicine & Health Sciences
Sultan Qaboos University
Sultanate of Oman
E-i-C: The Internet Journal of Medical Education
____/\\/********\\/\\____