The Decision to Submit to a Journal: Another Example of a Valence-Consistent Shift?

In this article we use a stated choice experiment to study researcher preferences in the information sciences and to investigate the relative importance of different journal characteristics in convincing potential authors to submit to a particular journal. The analysis distinguishes high quality from standard quality articles and focuses on the question whether communicating acceptance rates rather than rejection rates leads to other submission decisions. Our results show that a positive framing effect might be present when authors decide on submitting a high quality article. No evidence of a framing effect is found when authors consider a standard quality article. From a journal marketing perspective, this is important information for editors. Communicating acceptance rates rather than rejection rates might help to convince researchers to submit to their journal.