2008 JEEM Report
JEEM Managing Editor’s report, end of 2008
1. Submissions
This year has seen the largest number of submissions since 2001, the first year when automated records were kept, with 287 submissions. At the same time, the number of desk-rejects is down sharply, from 27 to 12, so that we have seen a significant increase in the number of papers processed. At the same time the rate at which processed papers were offered the opportunity to revise and resubmit is down from previous years, at about 16.9% (conditional on the paper not being desk-rejected).
2. Processing time
Average time taken by co-editors to first decision in 2008 is slightly less than 2007 (95.2 vs. 97.4). Similarly, average total time to first decision is down by about 4.5 days (109.6 vs. 114.1). The fraction of papers that take more than three months for co-editors to process is similar to last year as well (51.8% vs. 52.4%).
3. Acceptance rates
The available data can be used to construct ultimate acceptance rates for some of the past years. All files from 2001 through 2005 have been closed, and all but a handful of files from 2006 are closed as well. The table below lists the number of submissions, desk-rejects, invited R&Rs, rejections on the second and third rounds (listed as reject2 and reject3, respectively), and total number of papers ultimately accepted. Comparing this last number to papers submitted gives the acceptance rate in the penultimate column; I also list the fraction of papers that are ultimately accepted, conditional on having been offered the chance to resubmit (in the last column). A rough estimate of the current acceptance rate can be formed by multiplying the estimated revise-and-resubmit rate for 2008 (about 16.9%) against the conditional probability of acceptance given an invitation to revise has been offered (during my tenure, about .787), yielding an estimate of 12.5%.
4. Profile
Elsevier provided me with information on downloads during the first 9 months of 2008. This information allows one to identify patterns in downloads of published papers in the recent past. As detailed in the Tabular Report, of the 112 papers printed since March 2006 the average number of downloads per paper is 367.25 (as compared to 108.37 for papers published prior to March 2006). There is a strong trend to increased downloads over the past 5 years. For example, of the ten most downloaded papers, all but two were published in 2008 (the other two were published in 2005 and 2007); of the 30 papers that were downloaded more than 500 times, 14 were published in 2008 (as compared to 7 from 2007, 2 each from 2005 and 2006, 1 from 2004, 3 from 2003 and 1 from 2000).