Re: ALPSP Research study on academic journal authors

From: Sally Morris <sec-gen_at_ALPSP.ORG>
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 16:51:52 -0000

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: sec-gen_at_alpsp.org
ALPSP Website http://www.alpsp.org

Learned Publishing is now online, free of charge, at
www.learned-publishing.org
Received on Wed Jan 03 2001 - 19:17:43 GMT

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