Acceptance Rates and Journal Quality: An Analysis of Journals in Economics and Finance

This article examines publication, manuscript review, and citation statistics for journals that cover topics in economics and finance. The authors found that lower acceptance rates are associated with higher citation count, citation impact factors, and survey-based rankings of journals. However, rankings for any given journal may be substantially different depending on the ranking method applied. Acceptance rate information is available for more journals than are covered by citation rate data or survey-based rankings. So the authors also examine the association of acceptance rates with other factors that are plausibly associated with journal quality to determine whether acceptance rates for the broader population of journals reflect quality. The authors found that lower acceptance rates are significantly associated with type of readership, higher circulation, lower rates of invited papers, and availability of reviewers’ comments.