Re: Journal rejection and acceptance rates

[Sandy Thatcher <sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu>]

Many good questions here, and i will be interested in answers to 
them. But I can't help observing that universities, like 
journals, also advertise their acceptance/rejection rates of 
applicants to their freshman classes, and the reasons may be as 
varied as they are for journal acceptances/rejections. I.e., as a 
measure of "quality," they are somewhat suspect. There are 
parallels here to most of the questions asked below, e.g., are 
people put on the waiting list counted as acceptances or 
rejections?

Sandy Thatcher


>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
>____/\\/********\\/\\____