What makes a topic “relevant” to journal editors?

Abstract

Suitability of a paper for a specific journal is often based on an evanescent concept: the relevance of the topic covered to managing editors. Pressure for publishing has never been so high. An academic’s future position, funding, and prestige all depend on the quantity of papers published, their quality (or that of the journal in which they are published) and the number of citations they receive. Similarly, scientific journals face increasing pressure to boost their impact factor and climb up the journal rank of their respective categories. Most journals (particularly those with the highest impact factors) receive an overwhelming number of manuscripts that exceeds their capacity for peer-review. Consequently, editors often base a decision to accept or reject a manuscript on the interest of papers for the readers of their journal. The first decision that editors face is whether to send a paper for peer review. Editorial rejections prior to peer review reduce the burden on the already saturated community of reviewers and may save time for authors who can readily submit their paper to a different journal (Cooke and Lapointe 2012). However, they also increase the rejection rate per author. Indeed, editorial rejections are an important source of frustration for authors, who have to spend tedious time in reformatting their papers without any reward in terms of feedback, because these rejections are normally poorly justified and based on very general statements. Leaving aside issues on the fit of papers to the journal scope and aims (which should be clearly explained in the journal web site, (Cooke and Lapointe 2012)), editorial decisions are mostly based on this ethereal idea of the perceived relevance of the topic covered by deciding editors. Hidden by anonymity (in pre peer-review rejections, the name of the subject editor is frequently not revealed) and justified by a baseless “lack of space” in the journal (when most journals are online and available space has become almost infinite (Aarssen 2012, Wardle 2012)), editors are empowered to reject papers, openly disregarding the scientific quality of the contribution in favour of an alleged lack of interest or the consideration that the manuscript is of relevance only for a narrow community. But editors, by their very nature, must be generalists, even in specialized journals. This means they are frequently not familiar with the field of the paper they are evaluating. Consequently, a decision based on the relevance of the paper to their audience may not be straightforward, particularly without the expert views of peers. Should this type of decision be left in the hands of just one person? We argue here that assessments from a sole individual, frequently not familiar with the field of the paper, may be thematically and/or geographically biased, and therefore, lead to erroneous conclusions, preventing the advance of knowledge. Ideally, a relevant paper would be one that has the capacity to move the field forward. However, the evaluation of the significance of a contribution is ultimately biased by the background of the editor and his/her field of expertise. This situation is particularly dramatic when environmental problems affecting a significant percentage of the world population—but less pertinent to those in high-income countries—may be overlooked by the scientific community, partly because scientists from low-income countries (and with them their scientific and social demands) are underrepresented within journal editorial boards. Only four journals of the top 10 in ecology include editors from low or middle-income countries (as defined by the World Bank designation of Gross National Income per capita: http://data.worldbank.org), where they represent