Re: Citation and Rejection Statistics for Eprints and Ejournals

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_coglit.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 13:30:50 +0000

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 Could anyone point me to published or unpublished data on the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
> >
>
Received on Wed Jan 03 2001 - 19:17:43 GMT