Why do journals reject manuscripts?

Eugen G Tarnow  December 20 2009 03:01:52 PM

I always wondered - why do journals reject manuscripts?  

Studies of peer review have consistently showed no effect (a slight improvement in the language) and it creates great delays in the publication process.  In the end papers are published in one journal or another anyway.  Besides, if a journal actually believed in peer reviews, the reviews would be published with the manuscript and they never are.

I assume that the publication process is costly and each journal has to limit the number of manuscripts (correct?).  That would account for Nature and Science only publishing so many manuscripts since everybody submits articles to them.  But why do lesser journals reject in cases other than articles that do not fit the readership?  Do all journals get too many manuscripts?  In some sense that is impossible since if all journals got too many manuscripts then many manuscripts would never be published and I don't think that is the case.

The peer review process goes on.  For every rejection a manuscript is delayed and more reviewers are asked to review the same manuscript for another journal.  Big waste of time if you ask me.  

But wait!  Now there is a new invention:  The "Neuroscience Peer Review Consortium".  They are " is an alliance of neuroscience journals that have agreed to accept manuscript reviews from other members of the Consortium".  Authors can ask the journal that rejected their manuscript to forward the reviews to a second journal to speed up the process.  Sounds like a small improvement.

• Comments [0]