Motives for rejection in management journals

Abstract

The high rejection rates of papers submitted to management journals warrant an analysis of the motives underlying why reviewers and editors recommend rejecting papers. This article investigates what are the most common flaws in the papers submitted to journals of “management, accounting and tourism” that may lead to rejection. Methodologically, this study relied on data collected by survey to 82 scientific journal chief-editors questioning the editors about the motives that lead them to reject articles in desk review and which are the key factors that their reviewers point out as reasons for the rejection of the articles. The results reveal that contribution is one of the crucial factors for achieving acceptation, and that the method is the section that tends to have more problems. We analyze the results and discuss their implications to the debate on academic productivism, providing a perspective on aspects to attend towards having the paper published.

Keywords
Editors; Reviewers; Management research; Editorial process; Publication