Journal rejection rate question

[Ollie123]

Quick question:

When journals publish their rejection rates (e.g. http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/2009-operations.pdf)

Are revise & resubmits counted as "rejections", or are they counted as "pending"? The wording of their tables is a bit ambiguous and it has pretty profound implications (i.e. a journal could look pretty selective with a rejection rate of 75%, but really they could accept every paper sent to them and just make them go through several rounds of revisions). I'd always assumed revise & resubmit counted as rejection for journal stats, but was never 100% certain...

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[roubs]

Don't they count as whatever pile they end up in after the rounds of revise&resubmit?

 

[Ollie123]

That was my original thinking way back when, but I have since seen that statistic reported separately on a number of occasions, so now I have my doubts. I guess with APAs system, things that were currently under revise & resubmit would count as pending? It also would not surprise me to see journals wanting to inflate their rejection rate to look more prestigious by giving additional revisions (which I guess isn't a completely illegitimate way to be more "prestigious" assuming the reviews are thorough and the revisions aren't just minor tweaks).

Maybe different publishers calculate it differently?

 

[psych8000]

It says that pending means articles that are still under review and may or may not be accepted. So I take that to mean that accepted and under revision are the same thing.

 

[futureapppsy2]

It says that pending means articles that are still under review and may or may not be accepted. So I take that to mean that accepted and under revision are the same thing.

Ah, but not all revisions and resubmissions are guaranteed acceptance. Of the two I've received thus far neither were guaranteed acceptance at the initial R&R request, although both happened to be accepted after revision and resubmission (one was then accepted pending additional minor revisions; the other was then accepted outright). I've heard of people being rejected after an R&R request, and in another case, we pulled a actually manuscript after a R&R request in order to rework it and then resubmit it as a new submission.

 

[deadmau5]

^ yeah, also as i said in another thread, one of my teams got rejected after revise and resubmitting.

 

[futureapppsy2]

A note on the bottom of the table in the link says,

The rejection rate indicates the percentage of submitted manuscripts not accepted for publication in a journal. For example, a rejection rate of 76% means that manuscripts submitted to a journal have a 24% chance of acceptance. The average rejection rate for all journals is calculated by dividing total acceptances by total submissions (with pending manuscripts factored out) and subtracting from 100%. It is not an average of the individual journal rejection rates.

Thus, for this data, it would appear that the "pending" articles are nonfactors, even though they still doesn't answer the question of where R&R requests lie. It defends pending manuscripts as "manuscripts for which final editorial decisions had not been made as of December 31, 2009." My guess would be that "pending" manuscripts are those that have been submitted or resubmitted but have not yet received a formal acceptance (including acceptance with minor revisions?) or rejection decision but are under review.

FWIW, one of the revisions and resubmissions I've received was actually termed "rejection with encouragement," although the language in the decision letter very much encouraged revision based on reviewer comments and resubmission. My guess is that this would be counted as a rejection, despite the request for revision and resubmission, and the later acceptance with minor revisions of the same paper would be counted as an acceptance. JMO.

 

[turinhere]

is there a set standard for rejection reporting across different journals? Or does every journal do their own math?

 

[LaserPrinter]

I think that each journal has it's own standards because they have their own editors... not sure what you mean though. There is of course well-known ball-park figures for correlations, Cohen's d's, etc... do you mean those kinds of "standards"?