Journal Acceptance Rates & Submission Guidelines
While publication information basics (where journals are published, how often, for how long, in what language, etc) are reasonable easy to find, acceptance rates can be quite hard to locate. There is no single source that publishes acceptance rates for all journals in all disciplines. We suggest the following:
- Check out the journal's website. In addition to manuscript submission guidelines, many publishers post acceptance rates in the authors' information section.
- Search the name of the journal and "acceptance rates" in Google or another web search engine.
- Search the discipline (i.e., biology) and "acceptance rates" in Google or another web search engine. (Note: your results will be mixed with student acceptance rates for schools and colleges.)
See below for information regarding publishing by core discipline:
- SCImago Journal and & Country Rank This link opens in a new window
A publicly available portal that includes the journals and country scientific indicators developed from the information contained in the Scopus® database (Elsevier B.V.). These indicators can be used to assess and analyze scientific domains. Journals can be compared or analyzed separately. Country rankings may also be compared or analyzed separately. Journals can be grouped by subject area (27 major thematic areas), subject category (313 specific subject categories) or by country. Citation data is drawn from over 34,100 titles from more than 5,000 international publishers and country performance metrics from 239 countries worldwide. Scimago Lab
Business
SCImago Journal & Country Rank:
- Basic publication information
- Link to journal homepage
- Link to publication guidelines
- Link to contact information
Literature and Languages
The MLA Directory is no longer published in print but is available in electronic format as part of subscription to the MLA International Bibliography. In our library, the MLA International Bibliography is available on the Gale database platform.
SCImago Journal & Country Rank:
- Basic publication information
- Link to journal homepage
- Link to publication guidelines
- Link to contact information
Nursing
Unfortunately, there is no published directory providing acceptance rates for nursing journals. We have found some resources you may find helpful -
Northam, S., Trubenbach, M., & Bentov, L. (2000, September). Nursing journal survey: information to help you publish. Nurse Educator, 25 (5), 227-236.
Retrieved January 14, 2008, from CINAHL Plus with Full Text database. Available in print copy in the VC/UHV Library, Periodicals Section.
Review of reasons cited by editors for rejecting manuscripts. Acceptance rates for 83 nursing journals. Survey data from 1998.
SCImago Journal & Country Rank:
- Basic publication information
- Link to journal homepage
- Link to publication guidelines
- Link to contact information
Psychology & Psychiatry
The APA publishes submission and acceptance rates for APA published journals in an annual report titled Summary Report of Journal Operations.
The APA website also hosts APA Publishing Resources, which provides links to policies, manuscript preparation information, and calls for papers for APA published journals.
- Basic publication information
- Link to journal homepage
- Link to publication guidelines
- Link to contact information