Seasonal bias in editorial decisions for a physics journal: you should write when you like, but submit in July

Abstract

A recent discussion on possible seasonal bias in editorial decisions yielded discrepant results for different journals. All studies agreed that further investigations in different fields are necessary. In this article submission and acceptance data are analyzed using a sample that is much larger than the previously investigated datasets. Specifically all the 15,478 submissions to EPL (formerly Europhysics Letters) submitted within the 12 years from 1999 to 2010 are included. While trends in the yearly number of submitted papers can be seen, these are also reflected in the number of accepted and rejected papers. Monthly fluctuations in the rate of acceptance are strong; averaging over several years smoothes these fluctuations and shows a clear maximum in July. Even more conspicuous fluctuations are found for the acceptance time, i.e. the duration of the reviewing process. Averaging over several years shows that this process is longest for manuscripts submitted in January, May and October.

Correlations between submission and acceptance of papers in peer review journals

“…Schreiber [5] considers that an entrance barrier can be set up by editors due to their work load. We understand such a bias as resulting from an accumulation of submitted papers at some time thereafter correlated to a large rate of desk rejection.…”

“…He claimed to find no statistical effect. However, -from Table 2 in [5], there is a clearly visible maximum for the number of submissions in July, more than 10% over the yearly mean, and a marked dip in submissions in February, -even taking into account the "month small length". Examining the acceptance rate (roughly ranging between 45 and 55 %, according to the month of submission), he concluded that strong fluctuations can be seen, between different months,.…”

“…Later, Schreiber [5] examined submissions to a specialized journal, Europhysics Letters (EPL), over 12 years. He observed that the number of submitted manuscripts had been steadily increasing while the number of accepted manuscripts had grown more slowly.…”

Day of the week effect in paper submission/acceptance/rejection to/in/by peer review journals. II. An ARCH econometric-like modeling

“…In fact, the latter could be also uploaded for any other journal on internet. Recall that the number of submitted and the number of rejected papers are not usually known (though see [35,36], in cases concerned with seasonal effects). Therefore, and furthermore in view of the following discussion, it is original to display the time series for the number of rejected papers when submitted on a given day.…”

The h-index, the citation rating, impact factors and the aspiring researcher

“…Journals may claim an average or a maximum number of days between submission and a decision to publish, but so much depends on the rate at which papers trickle through the refereeing process. The time of year in which papers are published then becomes largely unpredictable although evidence from physics suggests that July is a good month to submit (Schreiber, 2012). A measure that is considered useful is the centile rating for an individual paper.…”