[GOAL] Re: Hindawi grows to more than 5,000 submissions in March

[Ahmed Hindawi]

We at Hindawi very much believe that transparency is a great thing and
so we try to be as transparent as possible. For example, each and
every published paper has the name of the editor who recommend the
publication of such a paper. We also provide a publicly accessible
page with useful statistics about each of the journals we publish. The
page is located at http://www.hindawi.com/statistics/.

This pages contains the acceptance rate for each journal, time from
submission to first decision, to final decision, and to acceptance
(for those articles that are accepted for publication). The numbers
are calculated based on a one year period. For the acceptance rate for
example, the report looks at the oldest paper that has been submitted
to the journal that is not decided upon yet. This might have been
submitted 87 days ago, for example. We then take the 12 month period
that end right before the date of submission of this paper. All the
papers in this 12 month period are decided upon (either accepted or
rejected). We use these papers for calculating the acceptance rate
shows on the above page. Same goes for time from acceptance to first
decision, final decision, and acceptance. If the number of papers is
not large enough to drive meaningful numbers from it, we omit the
number from the report until we have enough papers to calculate a
meaningful number.

As you can see on this statistics page, our acceptance rates varies
considerably by the journal. Our average acceptance rate across our
whole collection is about 40%. So, although we don't really know how
many papers are going to be accepted from the 5,400 submitted in March
2012, I would expect the number to be just above 2,000.

Ahmed Hindawi

On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 8:29 PM, Couture Marc <couture.marc at teluq.ca> wrote:
> On April 2, 2012, Jeffrey Beal asked Paul Peters :
>
>>
>> How many of those 5,400 [March] submissions [to Hindawi journals] will
>> be accepted for publication?
>>
>
> Maybe I should wait for Mr Peters' reply, but if he knows the answer before these papers are reviewed, there will be some reason for concern.
>
> Even if I suspect this is by no way a naïve question, considering Jeffrey Beall's well known (and certainly useful) hunt of "predatory" OA journals, I will take it at face value.
>
> Acceptance rate is one indicator (among many) that can be used to evaluate journal quality. But, as all such indicators, it must be used with extreme caution. Like the ubiquitous impact factor, it may vary widely according to various factors : discipline, intended readership, editorial choices, etc. For instance, due to an openly stated editorial stance, PLoS One has a 70% acceptance rate, much higher than other prestigious journals.
>
> Another thing is that comparisons are difficult, as this indicator isn't easy to obtain. Some journals display this information, others not. And if I found easily a reference to Cabell's directories (http://www.cabells.com), which covers 3000 journals in various fields, I couldn't go farther without a subscription. The same applies, to a lesser extent, to the impact factors, which are available for only a fraction of journals (and a small one for OA journals).
>
> So, even if I had the numbers for some or all Hindawi journals, I don't know what it would really mean, except when it is close to 100%.
>
> To end with a little bit of humour, I invite your to discover what is certainly the most prestigious journal according to this indicator : http://www.universalrejection.org
>
> Marc Couture
>
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