People interested in rejection rates may not know that a list of rejection rates for a range of UK scholarly journals was published in the (now defunct)'Journal of Research Communication Studies' in 1978. In general terms, it supported the results of the Zuckerman and Merton study. The details are:-
M.D.Gordon 'Disciplinary differences, editorial practices and the patterning of rejection rates for UK research journals' Journal of Research Communication Studies, 1, 139-159 (1978) Jack Meadows At 03:03 AM 1/27/01 -0500, you wrote: >On Fri, 26 Jan 2001, Sally Morris <[email protected]> wrote: > >>[sm] We recently carried out an online survey of current peer review >>[sm] practice. We got 200 replies, representing many more than 200 >>[sm] journals (some respondents were multi-journal editors, or >>[sm] publishers). You can find the results at www.alpsp.org/pub4.htm > >Interesting report (at: http://www.alpsp.org/pub4.htm)! One of the >questions in the report was: > >"Q7 What percentage of papers are eventually accepted for publication?" > >The summary of the responses to this question was: > >"Acceptance rates show a wide variation and the broad bands used in this >questionnaire do not provide a particularly clear picture. However, the >majority of journals represented in the survey lie in the 25-50% band. A >considerable number of respondents accept more than 50% and less than 20% >(ie 80% rejection) of articles. A few journals have acceptance rates >higher than 75% and lower than 10% (90% rejection)." > >A question for Sally: > >Have the results for this question been cross-tabulated, to see whether or >not rejection rates are consistently higher for journals in some fields, >in comparison with journals in other fields? > >I'm particularly interested to know whether or not these results are >consistent with those reported by Zuckerman and Merton in 1971, They >reported substantial variation, with rejection rates of 20 to 40 percent >in the physical sciences, and 70 to 90 percent in the social sciences and >humanities. > >[See: Zuckerman HA, Merton RK. Patterns of evaluation in science: >Institutionalization, structure and functions of the referee system. >Minerva; 1971. 9:66-100]. > >Jim Till >University of Toronto > > Professor A.J.Meadows Information Science Department Loughborough University Loughborough Leics. LE11 3TU UK
