IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/feb/natura/00606.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Sequential order as an extraneous factor in editorial decision

Author

Listed:
  • Sultan Orazbayev

Abstract

Academic journal editors reject a significant portion of first submissions without sending them out for peer review. This decision, desk rejection, is made to reduce the workload on associate editors and referees, to give the submitting author a head start on revision or pursuit of an alternative venue, as well as to achieve quicker turnaround time for the journal. Desk rejection is a judgement based on the manuscript's perceived quality, impact and fit with the journal's scope. Could extraneous factors which are unrelated to the content of the manuscript, affect the editorial decision? This paper examines whether the sequential order in which manuscripts are submitted to a large academic journal affects the editorial decision. Becoming the first submission on the editor's list of manuscripts to review increases the probability of a desk rejection by up to 7% without any effect on the likelihood of a rejection after peer review.

Suggested Citation

  • Sultan Orazbayev, 2017. "Sequential order as an extraneous factor in editorial decision," Natural Field Experiments 00606, The Field Experiments Website.
    • Handle: RePEc:feb:natura:00606
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://s3.amazonaws.com/fieldexperiments-papers2/papers/00606.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ausloos, Marcel & Nedic, Olgica & Dekanski, Aleksandar & Mrowinski, Maciej J. & Fronczak, Piotr & Fronczak, Agata, 2017. "Day of the week effect in paper submission/acceptance/rejection to/in/by peer review journals. II. An ARCH econometric-like modeling," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 468(C), pages 462-474.
    2. Joshua S. Gans & George B. Shepherd, 1994. "How Are the Mighty Fallen: Rejected Classic Articles by Leading Economists," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 8(1), pages 165-179, Winter.
    3. Steven M. Shugan, 2007. "The Editor's Secrets," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(5), pages 589-595, 09-10.
    4. R. Preston McAfee, 2016. "Edifying Editing," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 61(1), pages 110-118, March.
    5. Daniel Feenberg & Ina Ganguli & Patrick Gaulé & Jonathan Gruber, 2017. "It’s Good to Be First: Order Bias in Reading and Citing NBER Working Papers," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 99(1), pages 32-39, March.
    6. Maciej J. Mrowinski & Agata Fronczak & Piotr Fronczak & Olgica Nedic & Marcel Ausloos, 2016. "Review time in peer review: quantitative analysis and modelling of editorial workflows," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(1), pages 271-286, April.
    7. Ausloos, Marcel & Nedic, Olgica & Dekanski, Aleksandar, 2016. "Day of the week effect in paper submission/acceptance/rejection to/in/by peer review journals," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 456(C), pages 197-203.
    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. Yushan Hu & Ben G. Li, 2021. "The production economics of economics production," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 228-255, February.
    2. Cătălin Emilian Boja & Claudiu Herţeliu & Marian Dârdală & Bogdan Vasile Ileanu, 2018. "Day of the week submission effect for accepted papers in Physica A, PLOS ONE, Nature and Cell," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(2), pages 887-918, November.

    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. Liang Meng & Haifeng Wang & Pengfei Han, 2020. "Getting a head start: turn-of-the-month submission effect for accepted papers in management journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(3), pages 2577-2595, September.
    2. Rose, Michael E. & Opolot, Daniel C. & Georg, Co-Pierre, 2022. "Discussants," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(10).
    3. Ausloos, Marcel & Nedic, Olgica & Dekanski, Aleksandar & Mrowinski, Maciej J. & Fronczak, Piotr & Fronczak, Agata, 2017. "Day of the week effect in paper submission/acceptance/rejection to/in/by peer review journals. II. An ARCH econometric-like modeling," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 468(C), pages 462-474.
    4. Maciej J Mrowinski & Piotr Fronczak & Agata Fronczak & Marcel Ausloos & Olgica Nedic, 2017. "Artificial intelligence in peer review: How can evolutionary computation support journal editors?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(9), pages 1-11, September.
    5. Liu, Tianhao, 2021. "A study on day-of-week effect of submission: Based on the data of JSFST," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 563(C).
    6. Sahana Roy Chowdhury, 2016. "When do referees shirk in a peer review process?," Economics and Business Letters, Oviedo University Press, vol. 5(2), pages 45-49.
    7. Maciej J. Mrowinski & Agata Fronczak & Piotr Fronczak & Olgica Nedic & Aleksandar Dekanski, 2020. "The hurdles of academic publishing from the perspective of journal editors: a case study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 115-133, October.
    8. Marcel Ausloos & Olgica Nedič & Aleksandar Dekanski, 2019. "Correlations between submission and acceptance of papers in peer review journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(1), pages 279-302, April.
    9. Marion Gaspard & Antoine Missemer, 2019. "An inquiry into the Ramsey-Hotelling connection," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(2), pages 352-379, March.
    10. Marco LiCalzi, 2022. "Bipartite choices," Decisions in Economics and Finance, Springer;Associazione per la Matematica, vol. 45(2), pages 551-568, December.
    11. Medoff, Marshall H., 2003. "Collaboration and the quality of economics research," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(5), pages 597-608, October.
    12. Rosser, J. Jr., 1996. "Development, geography, and economic theory : Paul Krugman (The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995) pp. iii + 117, index, $20.00," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 450-454, December.
    13. Debraj Ray & Arthur Robson, 2018. "Certified Random: A New Order for Coauthorship," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(2), pages 489-520, February.
    14. David B. Audretsch & Christina Guenther & Adam Lederer, 2022. "Publishing in Small Business Economics: An Entrepreneurship Journal," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 1-5, January.
    15. Breitmoser, Yves, 2016. "Stochastic choice, systematic mistakes and preference estimation," MPRA Paper 72779, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Brogaard, Jonathan & Engelberg, Joseph & Parsons, Christopher A., 2014. "Networks and productivity: Causal evidence from editor rotations," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(1), pages 251-270.
    17. Hendrik P. van Dalen, 1999. "The Golden Age of Nobel Economists," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 43(2), pages 19-35, October.
    18. Hendrik P. van Dalen, 2003. "Pluralism in Economics: A Public Good or a Public Bad?," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 03-034/1, Tinbergen Institute, revised 18 May 2004.
    19. Legge, Stefan & Schmid, Lukas, 2016. "Media attention and betting markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 304-333.
    20. Bruno Frey, 2005. "Problems with Publishing: Existing State and Solutions," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 173-190, April.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • A19 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Other
    • D89 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Other
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:feb:natura:00606. 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: Francesca Pagnotta (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.fieldexperiments.com .

    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.