Acceptance rates of scholarly peer-reviewed journals: A literature survey
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2019.jul.07Keywords:
Acceptance rates, Rejection rates, Scholarly journals, Peer-review, Literature survey, Quality, Impact factor, Subscription journals, Open access, Predatory journals, Scholarly communication.Abstract
The acceptance rate of scholarly journals is an important selection criterion for authors choosing where to submit their manuscripts. Unfortunately, information about the acceptance (or rejection rates) of individual journals is seldom available. This article surveys available systematic information and studies of acceptance rates. The overall global average is around 35-40%. There are significant differences between fields of science, with biomedicine having higher acceptance rates compared to for instance the social sciences. Open access journals usually have higher acceptance rates than subscription journals, and this is particularly true for so-called OA mega-journals, which have peer review criteria focusing on sound science only.
Downloads
References
Aarssen, Lonnie W.; Tregenza, Tom; Budden, Amber; Lortie, Christopher J.; Koricheva, Julia; Leimu, Roosa (2008). "Bang for your buck: Rejection rates and impact factors in ecological journals". The open ecology journal, n. 1, pp. 14-19. https://doi.org/10.2174/1874213000801010014
Abby, Margaret; Massey, Michael D.; Galandiuk, Susan; Polk, Hiram C. (1994). "Peer review is an effective screening process to evaluate medical manuscripts". JAMA, v. 272, n. 2, pp. 105-107. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1994.03520020031008
Agrawal, Anurag A. (2014). "Four more reasons to be skeptical of open-access publishing". Cell press, v. 19, n. 3, P133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2014.01.005
APA (2017). "Summary report of journal operations, 2016". American psychologist, v. 72, n. 5, pp. 499-500. https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/2016-statistics.pdf
Beall, Jeffrey (2010). "´Predatory´ open-access publishers". The Charleston Advisor, April 2010. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/11886760.pdf
Binfield, Peter (2012). "Open access megajournals - have they changed everything?". Blog post, Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand. http://creativecommons.org.nz/2013/10/open-access-megajournals-have-they-changed-everything
Bjí¶rk, Bo-Christer (2015). "Have the "˜mega-journals´ reached the limits to growth?". PeerJ, n. 3, e981. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.981
Bjí¶rk, Bo-Christer (2017). "Growth of hybrid open access, 2009-2016". PeerJ, n. 5, e3878. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3878
Bjí¶rk, Bo-Christer (2018). "Publishing speed and acceptance rates of open access megajournals". Online information review. Early cite. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-04-2018-0151
Bjí¶rk, Bo-Christer; Solomon, David (2012). "Open access versus subscription journals: a comparison of scientific impact". BMC Medicine, v. 10, n. 73. https://doi.org/10.1186/1741-7015-10-73
Bjí¶rk, Bo-Christer; Solomon, David (2013). "The publishing delay in scholarly peer-reviewed journals". Journal of informetrics, v. 7, n. 4, pp. 914-923. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2013.09.001
Bohannon, John (2013). "Who´s afraid of peer review". Science, v. 342, n. 6154, pp. 60-65. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.342.6154.60
Butcher, James (2013). "Hybrid journals at Nature Publishing Group". Coasp conference, Riga, Latvia, 19.9.2013. https://oaspa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/James-Butcher-NPG.pptx
Callaway, Ewen (2016). "Open-access journal eLife gets £25-million boost". Nature news, 1.6.2016. http://www.nature.com/news/open-access-journal-elife-gets-25-million-boost-1.20005
Da-Silva, Pascal-Rocha (2015). "Selecting for impact: new data debunks old beliefs". Frontiers blog, 21.12.2015. https://blog.frontiersin.org/2015/12/21/4782
Da-Silva, Pascal-Rocha (2016a). Selecting for impact data_20160106, data set. https://figshare.com/articles/Selecting_for_impact_data_20160106_xlsx/2060589/1
Da-Silva, Pascal-Rocha (2016b). New data debunks old beliefs: Part 2, Selecting for impact: new data debunks old beliefs, Frontiers blog, 4.3.2016. https://blog.frontiersin.org/2016/03/04/initial-findings-confirmed-no-significant-link-between-rejection-rate-and-journal-impact
Dickersin, Kay (1990). "The existence of publication bias and risk factors for its occurrence". Journal of the American Medical Association, v. 263, n. 10, pp. 1385-1389. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1990.03440100097014
Edgar, Brian D.; Willinsky, John (2010). "A survey of scholarly journals using open journal system". Scholarly and research communication, v. 1, n. 2. http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/24
Elsevier (2019). Elsevier journal finder. http://journalfinder.elsevier.com
Frank, Erica (1994). "Authors´ criteria for selecting journals". Journal of the American Medical Association, v. 272, n. 2, pp. 163-164. http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.272.2.163
Gilbert, Natasha (2009). "Editor will quit over hoax paper. Computer-generated manuscript accepted for publication in open-access journal". Nature news, 15.6.2009. https://doi.org/10.1038/news.2009.571
Grant, William D.; Cone, David C. (2015). "If at first you don´t succeed: The fate of manuscripts rejected by Academic Emergency Medicine". Academic emergency medicine, v. 22, n. 10, pp. 1213-1217. https://doi.org/10.1111/acem.12763
Hindawi (2017). Case reports in pathology, home pages. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/cripa
Kaufman-Wills Group (2005). The facts about open access. Study commissioned by the ALPSP, AAAS and High-Wire Press, The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers. http://www.alpsp.org/publications/FAOAcomplete.pdf
Khosravi, Mohammad R. (2018). "Reliability of scholarly journal acceptance rates". Library hi tech news, v. 35, n. 10, pp. 7-8. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHTN-07-2018-0044
Kling, Rob; McKim, Geoffrey (2000). "Not just a matter of time: Field differences and the shaping of electronic media in supporting scientific communication". Journal of the American Society for Information Science, v. 51, n. 14, pp. 1306-1320. https://doi.org/10.1002/1097-4571(2000)9999:9999%3C::AID-ASI1047%3E3.0.CO;2-T
Lamb, Christopher R.; Adams, Clifford A. (2014). "Acceptance rates for manuscripts submitted to veterinary peer-reviewed journals in 2012". Equine veterinary journal, v. 47, n. 6, pp. 736-740. https://doi.org/10.1111/evj.12376
PNAS (2017). "Author frequently asked questions". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), website. http://www.pnas.org/site/authors/authorfaq.xhtml
Salinas, Santiago; Munch, Stephan B. (2015). "Where should I send it? Optimizing the submission decision process". PLoS one, v. 10, n. 1, e0115451. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0115451
Schultz, David M. (2010). "Rejection rates for journals publishing in the atmospheric sciences". Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, v. 91, n. 2, pp. 231-243. https://doi.org/10.1175/2009BAMS2908.1
Shen, Cenyu; Bjí¶rk, Bo-Christer (2015). ""˜Predatory´ open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics". BMC Medicine, v. 13, n. 230. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-015-0469-2
Smahel, David; Daneback, Kristian; Dedkova, Lenka (2014). "Editorial: How to increase probability of manuscript acceptance". Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, v. 8, n. 2, p. 1. https://doi.org/10.5817/CP2014-2-1
SpringerNature (2019). Journal suggester. https://journalsuggester.springer.com
Stephen, Timothy D. (2012). "Helping communication programs represent their strength". The electronic journal of communication, v. 22, n. 1-2, pp. 1-6. http://www.cios.org/EJCPUBLIC/022/1/022121.html
Sugimoto, Cassidy; Lariviére, Vincent; Ni, Chaoqun; Cronin, Blaise (2013). "Journal acceptance rates: a cross-disciplinary analysis of variability and relationships with journal measures". Journal of informetrics, v. 7, n. 4, pp. 897-906. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2013.08.007
Tenopir, Carol; Dalton, Elizabeth; Fish, Allison; Christian, Lisa; Jones, Misty; Smith, MacKenzie (2016). "What motivates authors of scholarly articles? The importance of journal attributes and potential audience on publication choice". Publications, n. 4, e22. https://doi.org/10.3390/publications4030022
Thomson Reuters (2012). Global publishing: Changes in submission trends and the impact on scholarly publishers. White paper, Thomson Reuters. http://scholarone.com/media/pdf/GlobalPublishing_WP.pdf
Wakeling, Simon; Willett, Peter; Creaser, Claire; Fry, Jenny; Pinfield, Stephen; Spezi, Valérie (2016). "Open-access mega-journals: a bibliometric profile". PLoS one, n. 11, e0165359. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0165359
Ware, Mark (2008). "Peer review: benefits, perceptions and alternatives". PRC Summary papers 4, Public Research Consortium, London, UK. http://publishingresearchconsortium.com/index.php/prc-documents/prc-research-projects/35-prc-summary-4-ware-final-1/file
Weller, Ann (2001). "Editorial peer review, its strengths and weaknesses". ASIST Monograph series. Information Today, Inc., Medford, New Jersey. ISBN: 1 57387 100 1
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Dissemination conditions of the articles once they are published
Authors can freely disseminate their articles on websites, social networks and repositories
However, the following conditions must be respected:
- Only the editorial version should be made public. Please do not publish preprints, postprints or proofs.
- Along with this copy, a specific mention of the publication in which the text has appeared must be included, also adding a clickable link to the URL: http://www.profesionaldelainformacion.com
- Only the final editorial version should be made public. Please do not publish preprints, postprints or proofs.
- Along with that copy, a specific mention of the publication in which the text has appeared must be included, also adding a clickable link to the URL: http://revista.profesionaldelainformacion.com
Profesional de la información journal offers the articles in open access with a Creative Commons BY license.
