Dear Prajapati

To be honest, editors feel its a waste of journal space to publish an author's work that they feel will not be cited either because the author is unknown (has no reputation among his peers in the field) or because there is little or no contribution. Editors pursue reputation and quality work. If the journal has one journal space left to take only one more article for a particular issue, and an unknown author submits a quality work while a reputed author submits a low-quality work, the editor will most likely consider the reputed author rather than the quality because the reputed work will be cited and the journal's ranking would increase. This practice is very common in 3* and 4* journals in almost every field in academic research.

A general advise is that the unknown/early-career researcher should begin publishing in 2* journals where this kind of bias is almost non-existent or little. Publishing by targeting 2* journals helps because it shows that the new author is a new peer in the field. After this, the early-career researcher can then work his way up to publish in 3* and 4* journals (it's not that easy but it is possible).

Academic publishing is a business, and editors are the marketers for journals to increase journal ranking via citation counts and other metrics. If articles from a specific journal is no longer cited by anyone, the editor will be removed. So now you see why editors have to make the hard-choice between 'accepting simple papers from reputed author' and 'accepting high-quality work from unknown peers''

As much as we think that editors are biased, this is how journal publishing works. At some point in our research career, each of us will become a journal editor and we will have to do this. Finally, I had one experience that changed the way I think about the double-blind process. I submitted a paper to a journal many years ago. The editor searched my linkedin profile and didnt see much to convince him that I am reputable in my field so he rejected my paper. Today, I have now been published in some reputable journals that are better than his journal, and he has recently sent me an email asking me to consider publishing in his journal. The point I am making here is that editors can be really biased about an author's reputation/quality simply by judging from what the author has put-up online as their academic profile. 

I hope this helps!

Regards

Peterson

They shouldn't do. The process should be blind to the reviewers and their collective decision should decide what is accepted or not. Of course, it is a double-bonus if the reviewers accept the manuscript - and it turns out that the author/s is a reputed academic in the field. It probably just appears that reputed authors 'always' get accepted. That's a flawed view though and probably biased in itself. As an editor myself, I would actually be hesitant about accepting a manuscript from a reputed author if it was not of good quality; that would appear bias. That said, a poor quality submission from an experienced author with a good reputation is unlikely. They have 'learnt the game' and have probably recruited good support mechanisms to assist.

@ Dean Whitehead Thank you for sharing your experience and opinion. I have question.

How non-native English authors can improve their writing? Would you suggest reading materials?

No problem Harshadkumar. That's a tough call question. There are a number of other threads on RG that debate resources etc for English as a second-language issues. They are probably your best bet. There are so many reading materials available - both academic and non-academic - that it would be very tricky for me to pick a small or singular selection.

This process is crystal clear: http://ijaridea.com/Editorial-Workflow

In my personal opinion, unfortunately, sometimes and not always, editors are biased towards authors' reputation/image when making decision about final selection or rejection of submitted work!!! I have seen examples of papers which are just a literature review of other papers and they are published at 4* journals. 

Dear Prajapati

To be honest, editors feel its a waste of journal space to publish an author's work that they feel will not be cited either because the author is unknown (has no reputation among his peers in the field) or because there is little or no contribution. Editors pursue reputation and quality work. If the journal has one journal space left to take only one more article for a particular issue, and an unknown author submits a quality work while a reputed author submits a low-quality work, the editor will most likely consider the reputed author rather than the quality because the reputed work will be cited and the journal's ranking would increase. This practice is very common in 3* and 4* journals in almost every field in academic research.

A general advise is that the unknown/early-career researcher should begin publishing in 2* journals where this kind of bias is almost non-existent or little. Publishing by targeting 2* journals helps because it shows that the new author is a new peer in the field. After this, the early-career researcher can then work his way up to publish in 3* and 4* journals (it's not that easy but it is possible).

Academic publishing is a business, and editors are the marketers for journals to increase journal ranking via citation counts and other metrics. If articles from a specific journal is no longer cited by anyone, the editor will be removed. So now you see why editors have to make the hard-choice between 'accepting simple papers from reputed author' and 'accepting high-quality work from unknown peers''

As much as we think that editors are biased, this is how journal publishing works. At some point in our research career, each of us will become a journal editor and we will have to do this. Finally, I had one experience that changed the way I think about the double-blind process. I submitted a paper to a journal many years ago. The editor searched my linkedin profile and didnt see much to convince him that I am reputable in my field so he rejected my paper. Today, I have now been published in some reputable journals that are better than his journal, and he has recently sent me an email asking me to consider publishing in his journal. The point I am making here is that editors can be really biased about an author's reputation/quality simply by judging from what the author has put-up online as their academic profile. 

I hope this helps!

Regards

Peterson

Dear Peterson GREAT ANSWER! :)

Colleague Peterson, great and real answer. After 20 years of walking in the Scientific path, from a developing country, I have realized that ERBs, not EiC or Assoc. Editors, are biased to: 1) topic aligns to their own interests; 2) research method used is the preferred by the reviewer; 3) the scope of contributions is the expected for them; 4) any experimented reviewer can easily identify the origin, resources, reputation, and other subjective clues in the style and grammatical issues in the paper; 5) if the paper passes the previous 4 filters, the typical strategy is to inquiry core statements, why did you select these 7 methods? why did not you use these ones, why, and why. Science is produced, sold and consumed by top countries and institutions, and researcher living outside of the 1st circle never will be published in tops journals. We must accept our sad reality. Thanks.

Manuel

PS In my last 3 rejected papers in JCRs, 1 of the 3 reviewers liked and recommend accept the paper, and the other 2 simply consider it like trash. Scientific Reviews are totally subjective and no scientific ones. They are totally appreciative, and should be non anonymous. The real TOP SENIORITY GENIOUS of the 70's now are retired and we have been invaded by young researchers that consider JCRs as the maximum trophy. We must be honest, maybe just 1% or less of the published in JCRs will change and drive the world, and the remainder papers are just marginal papers.

I am somehow "on both sides": have an experience of being rejected with absolutely no reason, and am an editor myself. To put it simple: the hughe pipeline of submissions into the high-class journals force editors to find the ways to select papers they truly believe in. Unfortunately, there are cases when author's name appear a stronger argument than a research contribution. As an editor, I avoid this by all means; at the same time, I see some really high class journals that perhaps prefer another option...

I hate to admit but there is sporadic evidence that several top journals have published articles rejected by reviewers because some powerful authors were involved.

I dont even get the point of asking this question. An authors responsibility is to treat every work that is done as their own child. Whether a journal accepts or rejects the work is not a matter of concern. Getting published in top tier journals take time and a lot of effort. A "reputed author" did not earn his/her reputation in one day. So my advice to all researchers will be not to waste time by looking into such issues, instead, focus on your work and try to improve it. These constant efforts will surely transform a lesser known author of today to a highly influential one in the future. Best of luck :)

In my experience I'd say editors get intimidated by seeing good research papers coming from not so popular institutions from a non-english speaking country.. This is the truth and good researchers papers from India are and some developing nations are being deliberately boycotted by many journals because of the racist behavior of the editors. The journals don't follow any ethics.. We don't have any common ombudsman where we can seek justice for undue rejections.. They know this and play the trick.. They simply send to 5-7 reviewers until they get one negative comment and based on that one negative comment they reject the paper which is becoming very aggressive these days. Nowadays reviewers are not the problem., editors are.. Unfortunately we need a law or common ombudsman to control all the journals to eliminate bias in the field of science.. If this is done we will get so many new research work being published from all the countries across the globe the main aim of such racist editors are to encourage papers only from the so called first world countries. These days Indian only author papers are facing too many rejections and we have nowhere to go and seek justice.. They must come under a scanning. This has to be exposed.. We need a system where the "scholarone" Portal accepts manuscripts without any author details... First let them read our manuscript without knowing who we are and where we are from. I mean the editors let them read our manuscript without our names let them decide whether to send to reviewers after review process if the paper gets accepted we'll reveal. Our identity.. This should be by far the most ethical way of publishing research articles.. Academic professors all over the world nowadays are misusing their positions as editors and reviewers and are playing around with our lives. Let this new blind system where even the editors don't know about the authors come in.. I. Don't think anyone will have a problem in this system if editors around the world don't agree for this blind submissions then we can find out their real intention.. Why should editors know our origin our names and which Institute we are coming from.. Let them scrutinize our manuscript not with one reviewer but even with 10-15 after thorough scrutiny let them decide.. During review process if they want any additional documents we authors can submit unanimously through the same online portal.. Let them take time and decide and let us know the decision!