Don’t worry about journal acceptance rates – and here’s why

“Gate-keeping” is the selection of research that is deemed worthy of and relevant for publication in a journal. Choosing from unsolicited manuscripts submitted to the journal, the editorial team accepts some and rejects others, often after peer review. A way to quantify this process is the “journal acceptance rate”. Image The acceptance rate appears regularly on journal home pages and via journal finder tools. But what does this seemingly straightforward measure signal to an author considering where to submit a manuscript?What do acceptance rates measure?Several practical factors influence the number of manuscripts that each journal accepts; these include the quality, interest in or importance of submitted manuscripts, the number of and relationships to other journals in the same field, and any manuscript backlogs or page limitations. Each factor will have a varying impact on acceptance rate.The drivers of submission rates might include: the size of the field, the number of and relatio...