I have personally had bad experiences, and know dozens of my colleagues from different regions that were also rejected based on where they came from. There is no other explanation to why we get rejected, given the poor quality of work that does get published instead. Poorer papers, with worse data and analysis from developed countries seem to get published without any problem. This seems to result in many new journals whose quality are lowering. Surely, this is a problem?
There is a flip- side to this debate that can work in the favor of 'less established' countries. I review for over 30 international journals and I am noting more frequent submissions from researchers in parts of the world such as Iran, for instance. Rather than immediately thinking ' it will not be as good as research from other established countries' , I actually think 'if the study appears credible', this study has at least a cultural advantage over others - and is more likely to bring a more unique perspective to the existing literature.
Hi George. I think the answer is yet, at least in my experience. I have had quite a few papers rejected, because the editors argued that "Borneo [where I work] was of only limited interest to their [conservation] readership". That confused me quite a bit, especially because there are few places in the world with more species and higher threats than Borneo. Anyway, I did an analysis, which remains to be published, on citation frequency vs country. I quote from the results: "Papers containing the word conservation and "USA" have the highest citation rates, although this effect was less pronounced when the search was limited to words in the title only. South-East Asian countries of high conservation importance (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and especially Thailand) stood out for their low citation rates compared to the USA, Australia, and several Latin American countries (especially Mexico, Brazil, and Costa Rica, but not Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru)." So if you want your papers accepted for publication and cited a lot, you may want to focus on certain parts of the world rather than others.
I heard a partial (and unfair) explanation by a editor-inchief of a 'impact' journal. The problem with many countries (geographic areas) is to find reviewers, many 'developed countries' are well known and easy to review by other researchers. Then the paper is rejected because the editors can not find reviewers, or many of them rejected review this kind of papers.
another reason may be simply commercial. The journals sell more copies to libraries in 'developed' countries. I have heard a speech by the chair of our national funding agency in which he stated that the editorial policies of Nature and Science are partially driven by this kind of considerations.
Quite often, papers are rejected just because the poor quality of the English, just because the author is not a native English speaking person. I absolutely agree that some papers are very interesting, despite their 'poor English' and at the other side, several papers are published just because they are very well written (by native English speaking persons) but scientifically are of very low quality. And all this is very pitty!
Unfortunately, in some research areas, some countries are 'hot' and some are not... I am from Estonia and I've noticed that if I present a paper at a conference about my country, the audience is smaller than if I present a paper about China (fortunately I can, as my former PhD student is Chinese and we have written some papers together). Also, it has been very easy to get papers about China accepted to books. On the other hand, recently a major journal in my area sent my paper about Estonia to reviewers (but based on very good data), I have not received the reviews yet, but at least they did not desk-reject it just because of the country I wrote about.
Dear Tiia, it could not be a matter of the size of the country... The Netherlands is very small too. Good luck on your paper, keeping fingers crossed for you.
I do not make choices based on country. I think that would be silly because if you want the journal to improve and science to advance, you must select the best papers.
There is a flip- side to this debate that can work in the favor of 'less established' countries. I review for over 30 international journals and I am noting more frequent submissions from researchers in parts of the world such as Iran, for instance. Rather than immediately thinking ' it will not be as good as research from other established countries' , I actually think 'if the study appears credible', this study has at least a cultural advantage over others - and is more likely to bring a more unique perspective to the existing literature.
A very good point Dean. Further, more and more journals offer also linguistic support to non native english speaking authors just to improve the linguistic quality of the paper.
I have also experienced problems in publishing my papers, even when the research had novel and good data, interesting results and might contribute to an increase in the knowledge of my study subject. It is common sense that reviewers tend to reject papers based on the geographical location or authors' country. Even for non-native speakers, English is not a problem as many services provide excelent proofreading. Data analysis is not a problem either, as nowadays several statistical softwares can perform almost everything and there is support in many forums and books. I once asked an editor of an important journal and he said that there is no prejudice at all in editor's and reviewers' judgment, but given my own experience and tlaking to some colleagues, we sadly sense our papers are rejected based on ludicrous peer-review.
Pity, but I would say that country of origin is important for accepting research paper for many reasons. Good English is only one. High quality paper is usually done by many researchers together, and it is usually one in a number of reports based on long-term research. I like most of my unpublished research results :), but must accept that many of them were completed only in 5-10 years from first results. So, well-established research teams in developed countries really have better chances to make research and publish it. Large number of MSc and PhD students in US/EC Universities from developing world confirms it. I believe that in 10 years Chinese, Estonian or Iranian papers will be accepted equally with US or British ones in best journals, but now ...
Brother, it seems like you are talking about some research that has importance of regionality. In natural sciences, the region of work is not important at all except the likely impact. That means the work carried out in less privileged countries is generally of less importance in international importance as the platform is already advanced for that and the work is less likely to be important for broader audience. That is quite natural, although unfortunate for researchers from those areas. Otherwise nationality should not be a criterion.
As an editor and one who sees many papers from around the world, the country of origin has nothing to do with acceptance or rejection. First and foremost is the scientific merit of the paper and whether or not it fits within the guidelines for the particular journal. If the paper satisfies these criteria, but there are problems with English expression, grammar, etc., I will usually try to assist the author(s) to get it published. I know that a lot of editors will reject the paper at this stage or suggest that the author(s) get external assistance.
I wish that every editor thinks and does like you John. Thank you.
Agreed John - most editors of established journals are 'unbiased' when it comes to country of origin. As my earlier point - if a good quality study is submitted from a 'less common' country - it might actually work in its favour for me - especially if it differs from the more generic international context.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Academic Journals