RE: Journal rejection and acceptance rates

["Michael Mabe" <mabe@stm-assoc.org>]

Ken Masters" post raises some interesting issues that surround 
the attractiveness of journals to authors. He phrases this in 
terms of the rejection rates but I believe that we should 
interpret these as an indicator (with qualification) of the 
degree to which authors want (and believe it possible) to be 
published within the journals concerned. The top journals in a 
field often have very high rejection rates, perhaps as high as 
95% plus. Publication in these titles often conveys tremendous 
career opportunities: either it enhances the likelihood of tenure 
(in the west) or provides significant salary enhancement (as seen 
in China). The rewards of appearing far outweigh any effort 
expended in submission, so both western and Chinese authors (who 
know their contributions are borderline for the title to accept) 
will nevertheless submit on the off chance, contributing to a 
high rejection rate. In the case of authors with a poor grasp of 
English but a good grasp of the promotional possibilities of 
appearing in a top title, this can mean that papers are submitted 
to titles even when out of scope, thereby enormously enhancing 
the rejection rate. However such an analysis needs to be tempered 
with recognition of the self-selecting nature of authorship. As a 
publisher I used to have a journal that was at the very pinnacle 
of its field, widely regarded by scholars as the definitive 
outlet of the very best research with an impressive impact 
factor, one in which only the truly great would dare to publish. 
This title had a very low rejection rate (10%), not because it 
was a poor journal or inadequately edited but because its author 
base was extremely self-critical. Only the very top authors would 
even consider attempting to submit.

There is a direct analogy with student applications to the top 
schools. The best may indeed tend to attract more ultimately 
unsuccessful candidates, but equally those top schools known to 
be very difficult to get into may see a lower ratio as weaker 
students decide not to chance it.

In short then, while high rejection rates often correlate with 
perceived high quality, the reverse isn"t always necessarily the 
case. The real measure here is actually journal attractiveness 
tempered by author self-assessment.

Best, Michael

Michael A Mabe
Chief Executive Officer
International Association of STM Publishers
OXFORD, UK

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu 
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Ken 
Masters
Sent: 31 January 2011 23:28
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Journal rejection and acceptance rates

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