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
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Received on Wed Jan 03 2001 - 19:17:43 GMT