IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/infome/v7y2013i4p897-906.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Journal acceptance rates: A cross-disciplinary analysis of variability and relationships with journal measures

Author

Listed:
  • Sugimoto, Cassidy R.
  • Larivière, Vincent
  • Ni, Chaoqun
  • Cronin, Blaise

Abstract

There are many indicators of journal quality and prestige. Although acceptance rates are discussed anecdotally, there has been little systematic exploration of the relationship between acceptance rates and other journal measures. This study examines the variability of acceptance rates for a set of 5094 journals in five disciplines and the relationship between acceptance rates and JCR measures for 1301 journals. The results show statistically significant differences in acceptance rates by discipline, country affiliation of the editor, and number of reviewers per article. Negative correlations are found between acceptance rates and citation-based indicators. Positive correlations are found with journal age. These relationships are most pronounced in the most selective journals and vary by discipline. Open access journals were found to have statistically significantly higher acceptance rates than non-open access journals. Implications in light of changes in the scholarly communication system are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Sugimoto, Cassidy R. & Larivière, Vincent & Ni, Chaoqun & Cronin, Blaise, 2013. "Journal acceptance rates: A cross-disciplinary analysis of variability and relationships with journal measures," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 897-906.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:7:y:2013:i:4:p:897-906
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2013.08.007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157713000710
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joi.2013.08.007?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Éric Archambault & Étienne Vignola-Gagné & Grégoire Côté & Vincent Larivière & Yves Gingrasb, 2006. "Benchmarking scientific output in the social sciences and humanities: The limits of existing databases," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 68(3), pages 329-342, September.
    2. Cherkashin, Ivan & Demidova, Svetlana & Imai, Susumu & Krishna, Kala, 2009. "The inside scoop: Acceptance and rejection at the journal of international economics," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 120-132, February.
    3. Chaoqun Ni & Debora Shaw & Sean M. Lind & Ying Ding, 2013. "Journal impact and proximity: An assessment using bibliographic features," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(4), pages 802-817, April.
    4. Carole J. Lee & Cassidy R. Sugimoto & Guo Zhang & Blaise Cronin, 2013. "Bias in peer review," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(1), pages 2-17, January.
    5. Radu Vranceanu & Damien Besancenot & Kim Huynh, 2009. "Desk rejection in an academic publication market model with matching frictions," Post-Print hal-00554732, HAL.
    6. David J. Solomon & Bo-Christer Björk, 2012. "A study of open access journals using article processing charges," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(8), pages 1485-1495, August.
    7. Oster, Sharon, 1980. "The Optimal Order for Submitting Manuscripts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 444-448, June.
    8. Blaise Cronin, 2012. "Do me a favor," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(7), pages 1281-1281, July.
    9. Chaoqun Ni & Debora Shaw & Sean M. Lind & Ying Ding, 2013. "Journal impact and proximity: An assessment using bibliographic features," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(4), pages 802-817, April.
    10. Cassidy R. Sugimoto & Blaise Cronin, 2013. "Citation gamesmanship: testing for evidence of ego bias in peer review," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 95(3), pages 851-862, June.
    11. Lutz Bornmann & Christophe Weymuth & Hans-Dieter Daniel, 2010. "A content analysis of referees’ comments: how do comments on manuscripts rejected by a high-impact journal and later published in either a low- or high-impact journal differ?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 83(2), pages 493-506, May.
    12. Blaise Cronin, 2012. "Do me a favor," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(7), pages 1281-1281, July.
    13. Carole J. Lee & Cassidy R. Sugimoto & Guo Zhang & Blaise Cronin, 2013. "Bias in peer review," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(1), pages 2-17, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kyle Siler, 2020. "Demarcating spectrums of predatory publishing: Economic and institutional sources of academic legitimacy," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 71(11), pages 1386-1401, November.
    2. Kyle Siler & Vincent Larivière & Cassidy R. Sugimoto, 2020. "The diverse niches of megajournals: Specialism within generalism," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 71(7), pages 800-816, July.
    3. Jan Oosterhaven, 2015. "Too many journals? Towards a theory of repeated rejections and ultimate acceptance," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(1), pages 261-265, April.
    4. Merigó, José M. & Yang, Jian-Bo, 2017. "A bibliometric analysis of operations research and management science," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 37-48.
    5. Milan Frederik Klus & Alexander Dilger, 2020. "Success factors of academic journals in the digital age," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 13(3), pages 1115-1143, November.
    6. Zeynep Didem Unutmaz Durmuşoğlu & Alptekin Durmuşoğlu, 2021. "A TOPSIS model for understanding the authors choice of journal selection," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(1), pages 521-543, January.
    7. Petersen, Alexander M., 2019. "Megajournal mismanagement: Manuscript decision bias and anomalous editor activity at PLOS ONE," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(4).
    8. Chengguang Li & Jungsoo Ahn & Juan Bu & Klaus E. Meyer, 2023. "The value of publishing in JIBS," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 54(9), pages 1688-1699, December.
    9. Houcemeddine Turki & Mohamed Ali Hadj Taieb & Mohamed Ben Aouicha & Ajith Abraham, 2020. "Nature or Science: what Google Trends says," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(2), pages 1367-1385, August.
    10. Elena Veretennik & Maria Yudkevich, 2023. "Inconsistent quality signals: evidence from the regional journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(6), pages 3675-3701, June.
    11. Ruben Miranda & Esther Garcia-Carpintero, 2019. "Comparison of the share of documents and citations from different quartile journals in 25 research areas," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(1), pages 479-501, October.
    12. Petr Heneberg, 2019. "The troubles of high-profile open access megajournals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(2), pages 733-746, August.
    13. Henk F. Moed & Gali Halevi, 2015. "Multidimensional assessment of scholarly research impact," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 66(10), pages 1988-2002, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David Card & Stefano DellaVigna, 2020. "What Do Editors Maximize? Evidence from Four Economics Journals," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(1), pages 195-217, March.
    2. David Card & Stefano DellaVigna, 2017. "What do Editors Maximize? Evidence from Four Leading Economics Journals," NBER Working Papers 23282, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Minhyeok Lee, 2023. "Game-Theoretical Analysis of Reviewer Rewards in Peer-Review Journal Systems: Analysis and Experimental Evaluation using Deep Reinforcement Learning," Papers 2305.12088, arXiv.org.
    4. Bayar, Onur & Chemmanur, Thomas J., 2021. "A model of the editorial process in academic journals," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(9).
    5. Kevin J. Boudreau & Eva C. Guinan & Karim R. Lakhani & Christoph Riedl, 2016. "Looking Across and Looking Beyond the Knowledge Frontier: Intellectual Distance, Novelty, and Resource Allocation in Science," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(10), pages 2765-2783, October.
    6. Rüdiger Mutz & Lutz Bornmann & Hans-Dieter Daniel, 2015. "Testing for the fairness and predictive validity of research funding decisions: A multilevel multiple imputation for missing data approach using ex-ante and ex-post peer evaluation data from the Austr," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 66(11), pages 2321-2339, November.
    7. J. A. García & Rosa Rodriguez-Sánchez & J. Fdez-Valdivia, 2016. "Why the referees’ reports I receive as an editor are so much better than the reports I receive as an author?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 106(3), pages 967-986, March.
    8. Sergio Copiello, 2018. "On the money value of peer review," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(1), pages 613-620, April.
    9. Petersen, Alexander M., 2019. "Megajournal mismanagement: Manuscript decision bias and anomalous editor activity at PLOS ONE," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(4).
    10. Cassidy R. Sugimoto & Blaise Cronin, 2013. "Citation gamesmanship: testing for evidence of ego bias in peer review," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 95(3), pages 851-862, June.
    11. Jürgen Janger & Nicole Schmidt-Padickakudy & Anna Strauss-Kollin, 2019. "International Differences in Basic Research Grant Funding. A Systematic Comparison," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 61664.
    12. Meyer, Matthias & Waldkirch, Rüdiger W. & Duscher, Irina & Just, Alexander, 2018. "Drivers of citations: An analysis of publications in “top” accounting journals," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 24-46.
    13. Feliciani, Thomas & Morreau, Michael & Luo, Junwen & Lucas, Pablo & Shankar, Kalpana, 2022. "Designing grant-review panels for better funding decisions: Lessons from an empirically calibrated simulation model," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(4).
    14. Andrada Elena Urda-Cîmpean & Sorana D. Bolboacă & Andrei Achimaş-Cadariu & Tudor Cătălin Drugan, 2016. "Knowledge Production in Two Types of Medical PhD Routes—What’s to Gain?," Publications, MDPI, vol. 4(2), pages 1-16, June.
    15. Oleksiyenko, Anatoly V., 2023. "Geopolitical agendas and internationalization of post-soviet higher education: Discursive dilemmas in the realm of the prestige economy," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    16. Randa Alsabahi, 2022. "English Medium Publications: Opening or Closing Doors to Authors with Non-English Language Backgrounds," English Language Teaching, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 15(10), pages 1-18, October.
    17. Yuetong Chen & Hao Wang & Baolong Zhang & Wei Zhang, 2022. "A method of measuring the article discriminative capacity and its distribution," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(6), pages 3317-3341, June.
    18. Qianjin Zong & Yafen Xie & Jiechun Liang, 2020. "Does open peer review improve citation count? Evidence from a propensity score matching analysis of PeerJ," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 607-623, October.
    19. Thomas Feliciani & Junwen Luo & Lai Ma & Pablo Lucas & Flaminio Squazzoni & Ana Marušić & Kalpana Shankar, 2019. "A scoping review of simulation models of peer review," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(1), pages 555-594, October.
    20. Weinhold, Ines & Gurtner, Sebastian, 2014. "Understanding shortages of sufficient health care in rural areas," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 118(2), pages 201-214.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:7:y:2013:i:4:p:897-906. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joi .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.