Re: Citation and Rejection Statistics for Eprints and Ejournals
There is also a difference bewteen the various fields about how much work justifies a separate publication. This is sometimes called the LPU, Least Publishable Unit. I think the concept arose in respect to the biomedical sciences, where some consider that it may be quite low. Jim Till wrote: on 08 February 2001, Robert Welham wrote (in part, in a message forwarded by Sally Morris): [rw] So they use a number of journals and, unconsciously perhaps, send a [rw] particular manuscript to the journal highest on their pecking order [rw] for which it has an evens chance of being accepted. Rejection rates [rw] thus tend to be around 50%. It's a sort of self-assessment exercise [rw] which the old hands can get quite good at. I think that Robert Welham's '50:50' hypothesis isn't supported by the evidence that's available. As noted in previous messages to this Forum, there seems to be real differences in rejection rates across different fields of research, *not* random variations around 50%. Then, his final comment was: [rw] The theory probably does not work for journals which get a lot of [rw] contributions from unprofessional authors and I guess that is why [rw] it begins to break down at the medical end where rejection rates go [rw] higher. So, he does seem to acknowledge that rejection rates might be higher in some fields than others, and appears to assume that, insuch fields, there are more contributions from 'unprofessional' authors (that is, more amateurs are sending more garbage?). I'd agree that, in theoretical high-energy physics (where rejection rates seem to be quite low), it's probably not easy for 'amateurs' to pretend that they can make a meaningful contribution to superstring theory! In such a field, it may be more likely that there's a 'scholarly consensus' about what's garbage and what isn't. I continue to think that Hargens' 'scholarly consensus' hypothesis is the one that's most strongly supported by the (limited?) amount of evidence that's available [Hargens, L. L. Scholarly consensus and journal rejection rates. American Sociology Review 1988:53(1), Feb., 139-51]. The more there's a 'scholarly consensus' (within a particular field of research) about what's garbage and what isn't, the lower the rejection rate. And, perhaps this hypothesis is also applicable to readers' assessments of self-archived eprints? Jim Till University of Toronto -- David Goodman Biology Librarian and Co-chair, Electronic Journals Task force Princeton University Library Princeton, NJ 08544-0001 phone: 609-258-3235 fax: 609-258-2627 e-mail: dgood...@princeton.edu
Re: Citation and Rejection Statistics for Eprints and Ejournals
On Thu, Feb 15, 2001 at 03:00:27PM -0400, David Goodman wrote: There is also a difference bewteen the various fields about how much work justifies a separate publication. This is sometimes called the LPU, Least Publishable Unit. Yes, when I went up for promotion, I had one paper which I thought was very good, so I argued that it was equivalent to 5-10 LPUs. I'm only half joking about this. As I pointed out before, promotion is the main sustainer of the otherwise obselete journal system in many areas of physics and some areas of math. -- /\ Greg Kuperberg (UC Davis) / \ \ / Visit the Math ArXiv Front at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/ \/ * All the math that's fit to e-print *
Re: Citation and Rejection Statistics for Eprints and Ejournals
David Goodman writes There is also a difference bewteen the various fields about how much workjustifies a separate publication. This is sometimes called the LPU, Least Publishable Unit. also called a publon. Physicists have researched that area (they are always ahead of the rest of us ;-). James Trevelyan and Peter Kovesi write: Publons Recent discoveries in the particle physics of the scientific publication industry have confirmed some hitherto ill-defined properties of the elusive publon particle. Originally discovered in Oxford, according to disputed reports, the publon is the elementary particle of scientific publication. A recent international congress [1] agreed on a definition: the elementary quantum of scientific research which justifies publication. However, the exact measurements were the subject of heated debate and no agreement was possible. It has long been known that publons are mutually repulsive. The chances of finding more than one publon in a paper are negligible [2]. The recent discoveries seem to confirm suspicions that publons can exist in more than one place simultaneously. Evidence from conferences in the more prolific disciplines, as diverse as Artificial Neural Networks, Cancer and AIDS research, and DNA Fingerprinting, has confirmed that the same publon has appeared in more than one conference or journal publication at the same time. Even more intriguing is the apparent ability of the same publon to manifest itself at widely separated instants in time. Once alerted to this new property, researchers have been inundated with confirmed reports of papers containing the same ideas separated by several years or even decades. One reason why this has not emerged until now seems to be that a publon can manifest itself with different words and terminology on each occasion, thus defeating observations with even the most powerful database scanners. From this, one can conclude that publons occupy a warped space-time continuum, and thus may be the first elementary particle to be confirmed to do so. Time travel, at least in the reverse direction, is a possibility. Spatial and time confusion are more definite probabilities. Of perhaps most concern is the likelihood of multiple publon images, particularly in CV's. Therefore, readers are warned to be cautious with publication lists, and to verify the exact number of distinct publons which give rise to the many publon images visible within the lists. The number of publons is likely to be less than the number of distinctly observable images, though the multiple image factor is known to vary widely. Researchers creating publons face the greatest difficulties arising from this research. For their career prospects depend not so much on the number of publons they create, as the number of images which are apparent to their employers. While word processors have helped enormously, drastically reducing the time needed to create publon images, their quality is subjected to an unprecedented level of quantitative analysis. Many believe that such quantitative analysis is neither feasible or economically justifiable. Most seem to agree that quality assessment requires experience of publon creation, and cannot be left to amateurs. [1] International Council of Scientific Unions, Working Party on Scientific Publication, Committee on Free Circulation of Scientific Ideas, XXV meeting, Aachen, Germany, 1991, pp 55423-87. [2] International Standards Organization, ISO/TC 297/SC 42/WG 3 N 8/ Revision 25b/ 1981-10-32. Cheers, Thomas Krichel http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
Re: Citation and Rejection Statistics for Eprints and Ejournals
See message below from Robert Welham, Royal Society of Chemistry Sally Morris, Secretary-General Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK Phone: 01903 871686 Fax: 01903 871457 E-mail: sec-...@alpsp.org ALPSP Website http://www.alpsp.org Learned Publishing is now online, free of charge, at www.learned-publishing.org - Original Message - From: PUBDIR (shared) pub...@rsc.org To: Sally Morris (E-mail) sec-...@alpsp.org Sent: 08 February 2001 15:13 Subject: Rejection Rates Sally, I refer to your email on these. For most journals rejection rates cluster around 50%. I believe that that is because the majority of authors want to send their work to the most prestigious journal possible. On the other hand they know that not everything they do is good enough for Nature. So they use a number of journals and, unconsciously perhaps, send a particular manuscript to the journal highest on their pecking order for which it has an evens chance of being accepted. Rejection rates thus tend to be around 50%. It's a sort of self-assessment exercise which the old hands can get quite good at. The theory probably does not work for journals which get a lot of contributions from unprofessional authors and I guess that is why it begins to break down at the medical end where rejection rates go higher. Robert Robert Welham, Director of Publishing Royal Society of Chemistry, Thomas Graham House, Science Park Cambridge, CB4 0WF, UK Tel: +44 (0) 1223 432323, Fax: +44 (0) 1223 423429 email: welh...@rsc.org mailto:welh...@rsc.org Http://www.rsc.org Http://www.rsc.org and http://www.chemsoc.org http://www.chemsoc.org
Re: Citation and Rejection Statistics for Eprints and Ejournals
On Sun, 28 Jan 2001, Rousseau Ronald wrote: Lowell Hargens' article Scholarly consensus and journal rejection rates published in the American Sociological Review, 1988, vol.53, 139-151 contains the only list of rejection rates I know of. Obtaining the corresponding impact factors and calculating the correlation is probably not so difficult to do. Hargens' article is followed by a comment by Stephen and Jonathan Cole, and Gary Simon. This in turn is followed by a reply by Lowell Hargens. Success! Ronald Rousseau Many thanks! Has anyone actually done the calculations? ADDED IN 2004: Here is what I have found in the literature: Lee KP, Schotland M, Bacchetti P, Bero LA (2002) Association of journal quality indicators with methodological quality of clinical research articles. AMA-JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION 287 (21): 2805-2808 High citation rates... and low manuscript acceptance rates... appear to be predictive of higher methodological quality scores for journal articles Ray J, Berkwits M, Davidoff F (2000) The fate of manuscripts rejected by a general medical journal. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF MEDICINE 109 (2): 131-135. The majority of the manuscripts that were rejected... were eventually published... in specialty journals with lower impact factor... Donohue JM, Fox JB (2000) A multi-method evaluation of journals in the decision and management sciences by US academics. OMEGA-INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCE 28 (1): 17-36 perceived quality ratings of the journals are positively correlated with citation impact factors... and negatively correlated with acceptance rate. Yamazaki S (1995) Refereeeng System of 29 Life-Science Journals Preferred by JapanesE Scientists SCIENTOMETRICS 33 (1): 123-129 There was a high correlation between the rejection rate and the impact factor Stevan Harnad -- Could anyone point me to published or unpublished data on the correlation between journal citation impact factor and submission rejection rate? Many thanks Stevan Harnad Cognitive Science Southampton University
