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I have been asked whether the acceptance/rejection figures varied significantly by subject area, so I have delved deeper into the figures to analyse this. The provisional results are interesting (bear in mind, though, that the samples for some subjects are very small)
By and large, the arts and humanities journals (if I may call them that) appear to be far fussier than those in the sciences, with a marked skew towards a low percentage of acceptances. I attach a table for those who can read it. If we look only at those samples covering more than ten journals: Engineering & Materials Science (12 journals, 6 responses) All of the responses showed between 50 and 75 percent acceptance Life Science (39 journals, 29 responses) Under 10 percent - none 10-25 - 3 percent 25-50 - 46 percent of journals, 48 percent of respondents 50-75 - 33 percent of journals, 31 percent of respondents over 75 - 18 percent of journals, 17 percent of respondents Mathematics and Computing (11 journals, 4 responses) Under 10 percent - none 10-25 - none 25-50 - 64 percent of journals, 75 percent of respondents 50-75 - 36 percent of journals, 25 percent of respondents over 75 - none Life Science (39 journals, 29 responses) 10-25 - 3 percent 25-50 - 46 percent of journals, 48 percent of respondents 50-75 - 33 percent of journals, 31 percent of respondents over 75 - none Medical and Veterinary Science (66 journals, 53 responses) Under 10 percent - 2 percent 10-25 - 3 percent 25-50 - 24 percent of journals, 26 percent of respondents 50-75 - 38 percent of journals, 40 percent of respondents over 75 - 15 percent of journals, 11 percent of respondents Social Science and Education (26 journals, 21 responses) Under 10 percent - 4 percent of journals, 5 percent of respondents 10-25 - 42 percent of journals, 48 percent of respondents 25-50 - 35 percent of journals, 33 percent of respondents 50-75 - 19 percent of journals, 14 percent of respondents over 75 - none So insofar as these figures are representative (they cover just over 200 journals), there does seem to be some bias towards lower average acceptance rates (i.e. higher rejection rates) in the arts and humanities than in the sciences. What that tells us I am not sure! Sally 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: [email protected] ALPSP Website http://www.alpsp.org Learned Publishing is now online, free of charge, at www.learned-publishing.org
