The highest impact factor journals are often criticized for rejecting too many too fast, and often too unfairly, a high proportion of the manuscripts they receive. Since they receive a larger amount of manuscripts relative to lower IF Journals, they are considered (assumed?) able to select the best quality research in their field. But, are they really publishing better science than lower impact journals? Many excellent scientists across the globe are unable to publish in High IF journals because they are unable to afford the publication fees. One may think that in many (most?) cases the quality of science high IF journals publish is not necessarily better than lower IF journals (note that High vs Low IF is a relative comparison, there is not a line/value separating both). What do you think? For instance, are the papers you have published in the highest IF Journal, your best quality papers? Do you see a positive relationship between IF and the quality of the science being published?
High impact factor journals are, most of the times, more interested in articles from established and well known scholars who have made names in their chosen careers. It is always very difficult for young and upcoming scholars to break into highly rated journals. Whether articles have high quality or not is not always the priority of the first-class journals. Hardly can you see a novice (unknown scholar) publishing in "A*" journals. It is always a hard nut to crack for unknown scholars. Researchers generally pay more attention to articles from high impact factor journals irregardless of the quality. Thus, articles from high impact factor journals tend to attract more citations. This could be reasons many quality articles are eventually published in low impact factor journals.
IF is a citation-based measure. In my view, citations received by an article have different implicactions (ex. relevance, supporting an argument, etc.), but hardly account for the quality of an article. Moreover, quality is a subjective notion and it is extremely difficult quantifying its true value based on individual quantitative measures. On the other hand, IF is a journal level measure, not an article level metric. Thus, there is no way to utilize this measure to determine the quality of individual research. Reason for higher rejection rates of higher impact journals may be caused by the higher number of submissions they received. There could be a direct correlation between these two, and this may also cause to display a relationship between IF and rejection rate.
Dear Dr. Alejandro Bortolus ,
I agree with you and with Dr. Manjula Wijewickrema 's statement. I may add that I have seen many good quality articles in low IF factor journals as well.
Best,
Dr. Vardan Atoyan
High impact factor means high number of citations, in other words, high scientific content papers..
My answer is YES...
High impact factor journals are, most of the times, more interested in articles from established and well known scholars who have made names in their chosen careers. It is always very difficult for young and upcoming scholars to break into highly rated journals. Whether articles have high quality or not is not always the priority of the first-class journals. Hardly can you see a novice (unknown scholar) publishing in "A*" journals. It is always a hard nut to crack for unknown scholars. Researchers generally pay more attention to articles from high impact factor journals irregardless of the quality. Thus, articles from high impact factor journals tend to attract more citations. This could be reasons many quality articles are eventually published in low impact factor journals.
Yes but not all the times I can bear witness that sometimes it depends on who you know in those journal especially the editor. Some novel ideas are normally rejected despite the high quality for no reason while those of lower quality are accepted because some one associated with the journal is among the authors. It political sometimes
I agree with Joan Nyika that 'politics' cannot be ruled out of being rejected by some high IF journals. Sometimes, you wonder why an article is desk-rejected by the editor often without any germane reason, or, at best, on flimsy excuses; whereas, you later notice that some articles with less quality are published by the same journal. Again, I notice that articles that are too technical for average researchers, or limited in scope, are less cited than the less technical ones with a wider scope. Thus, some journals may not have high IF due to the nature and limited coverage of the articles they publish, which may not necessarily translate into their being of low quality.
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