Editorial board publication strategy and acceptance rates in Turkish national journals

Scientific journals act as the primary medium for scholarly communication. Their editors, as gatekeepers of science, have responsibility towards their journals as well as the scientific community to protect the integrity of science and improve publication practices. The editorial job requires careful coordination of many stakeholders, yet most importantly careful evaluation of submissions from other researchers. Editors determine journal policies, conduct initial review, select suitable reviewers, manage conflicts of interest, and deliver the final decision (Hames, 2001; Sarigöl et al., 2017). Editors often contribute significantly to the quality of submissions as editorial discretion in reviewer selection and revisions substantially influence the final state of the manuscript (Besancenot et al., 2012; Laband & Piette, 1990; Stigler et al., 1995). The importance of editorial positions is hard to overemphasize (Burgess & Shaw, 2010) and requires selection of board members based on scientific merit (Bedeian et al., 2009; Gasparyan, 2013; Lindsey, 1976). Editors should be outstanding individuals in the profession and have the confidence of academic community (Kaufman, 1984). As they seek to publish the best research papers, they often need to make difficult decisions such as rejecting submissions from reputable scientists, friends, and colleagues. Sharma (2016) and Ougrin (2019) note that editors’ job is not to be friends with everyone. Rather, it requires being able to reject their submissions based on scientific grounds at the expense of losing them. Many premier journals are very selective and reject over 90% of submissions to maintain their leading journal status (Conley, 2012; Wardle, 2012). Journals with underqualified editors could have lax publication standards and accept submissions with questionable originality and soundness, resulting in high acceptance rates. Meticulous researchers would begin to avoid these low-quality journals because their editors are not eligible to validate the works of others (Lowe & Van Fleet, 2009). Journals managed by qualified boards, on the other hand, would handle manuscripts more carefully to improve the content and quality of the journals (Franke et al., 1990), and have lower acceptance rates. Therefore, a causal relationship could be observed between editorial board quality and journal acceptance rates.

This study argues that board quality and journal acceptance rate are negatively associated. The hypothesis is not new. Acceptance rate is often recognized as a good indicator of elitism as it is associated with other journal quality indicators such as impact factor and citations (Conley, 2012; Haensly et al., 2008; Krueger & Shorter, 2011; Sugimoto et al., 2013), even more so in local journals which lack a diverse international author base. Local journals lack editorial transparency and rarely disclose vital journal metrics such as acceptance rate and review time (Tutuncu et al., 2022). Their editors may be unwilling to disclose acceptance rates and withhold information about their conduct as low acceptance rates may discourage submissions. At the same time, high acceptance rates may imply lax editorial conduct and drive away qualified researchers who are selective about their publication outlets. Local journals suffer from misfortunes that reputable mainstream journals do not face. Insufficient technical resources, low-quality of submitted manuscripts, lack of international recognition, narrow editor and reviewer pool, and consequently low-quality reviewer feedback (Marusic & Marusic, 1999; Salager-Meyer, 2008; Tutuncu, 2023) hamstring their development and visibility to count a few. Many small journals receive an insufficient number of submissions (Donovan, 2009; Donovan, 2013) and may adopt a less rigorous review process to fill their issues in a struggle for survival. In this environment, editors assume an even greater role to review and filter out submissions before sending out for peer review, as local reviewers cannot be relied on to provide detailed and robust commentary. Editorial policies are also important to prevent external influences on editorial decisions as acquaintances and colleagues may attempt to gain editors’ favor to publish substandard articles (Tutuncu, 2023). Rejection is not a popular form of editorial decision in small local scientific communities as collegiality concerns often take precedence and editors may face backlash for rejecting submissions. In this setting, only scientifically capable and determined editors can impose selectivity based on research quality. After all, editors can always increase the number of published articles in the journal if they do not impose a degree of selectivity. Prior studies argue that board scientific performance and journal quality should be positively correlated as editors set the benchmark for journals’ publication strategy and editorial quality would be reflected in journal policies (Asnafi et al., 2017; Besancenot et al., 2012; Hudetz, 2011; Kay et al., 2017; Pagel & Wu et al., 2018; Xie et al., 2019). Journal quality is often represented by impact factor, which is a controversial proxy for quality (Editors, 2006; Kurmis, 2003; PLOS Medicine Woolston, 2020; Seglen, 1997; Seglen, 1998), as editors have little control over it. Acceptance rate is less ambiguous (Haensly et al., 2008) and a more direct product of editorial assessment. Highly selective journals would also be more selective in editor appointments, leading to a positive association between the two. Turkish higher education provides an excellent setting to test this hypothesis due to clear delimitation of high- and low-quality publications. Promotion regulations award a different score to each publication type. For example, a research article is awarded 8 points if published in a local journal, 10 points if published in a Scopus and/or Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) journal, and 20 points if published in a Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) journal. The regulations position SSCI articles as the highest quality publications. Yet the reward for SSCI articles is insufficient compared to the reward for national journals, considering the time and effort dedicated to produce a high-quality research paper (Tutuncu et al., 2022). Moreover, publishing SSCI articles is voluntary for social science researchers and Turkish social scientists can promote to full professorship based entirely on national articles. We exploit this setting to define editorial board quality and argue that publishing SSCI articles signals scholarly quality as Turkish social scientists do so without regulatory enforcement.

On the other hand, we argue that publishing in affiliated university journals (inside publications) signals lack of scholarly quality. Prior evidence suggests that academics associate inside publications with lower qualification (Koys, 2008). Insider practice is widespread in Turkey and nearly 30% of all articles in national journals are published by means of inside connections (Tutuncu, 2023). The inside publication route is facilitated by the fact that most universities appoint editors from a limited pool of their own academic staff. Studies on editorial board demographics show severe home-country bias in editorial board appointments (Brinn & Jones, 2008). In a similar fashion, Turkish university journals are mostly staffed by affiliated academics without much regard to their scientific qualifications. 87% of the editorial board members and 99% of the chief editors covered in this study are affiliated with the universities that publish the journals. High institutional concentration of editors indicates that institutional affiliation takes precedence over scientific qualification in editor appointments, which may have adverse effects such as obstructing innovation and progress (Hodgson & Rothman, 1999) and reducing journal quality (Wu et al., 2020), leading to clientele effect (Heckman & Moktan, 2020). Since editors are selected from a small pool of affiliated academics, the environment is prone to favoritism based on institutional grounds, and personal relations could be prioritized over scientific merit. In this setting, editorial boards are likely to tolerate publication requests from fellow faculty members (Tutuncu et al., 2022) and publish their own research (Luty et al., 2009; Walters, 2015). High-impact journals could occasionally publish their own editors’ research as their editors would normally submit to these journals and not want to be excluded because of their editorial positions (Hames, 2001). These situations do not directly indicate unethical behavior and wrongdoing (Soreide et al., 2010). Many journals develop policies to deal with conflicts of interest and treat these submissions strictly as any other (Harvey, 2013; Mani et al., 2013). Journals with lower publication standards, however, would be more vulnerable to favor requests as their editorial assessment would not filter out low-quality submissions. An academic would not repeatedly submit to journals with questionable scientific credentials unless he/she reaps career or monetary benefits (Grancay et al., 2017). These rent-seeking researchers could choose affiliated university journals to meet performance targets and advance their careers rather than going through a long and troublesome review process in reputable journals. This study draws a contrast between these two options to define editorial board quality. Although a scholar can publish in both types of journals over lifetime, the overall publication portfolio of the scholar and the proportion of high-quality research determines his strategy.

The sample covers 219 university journals in Social Sciences that manage review process and disclose journal metrics on Dergipark publishing platform. Unlike prior studies that rely on high-impact journals, this research relies on local Turkish journals covered by the national TR index to assess editorial board quality. Data does not contain self-reporting bias as acceptance rates are not disclosed voluntarily but were revealed as a result of a change in Dergipark policy and algorithm in February 2023. Only 29 of the journals are indexed in Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) or Scopus and none of them has impact factor.^① Measures of individual productivity are combined to create four aggregate measures of editorial board publication strategy: number of inside publications per editor (INSIDER), number of SSCI publications per editor (SSCI), board citation per editor (CITATION), and a variant of Herfindahl Index (inside-to-SSCI ratio - ISRA). This construct predicts that editorial boards with a larger number of insider papers per editor and greater ISRA will be of lower quality and their journals will have higher acceptance rates. These editors publish predominantly by means of inside connections, and the credibility of their assessment will be low. In contrast, boards with a larger number of SSCI publications per editor, higher CITATION, and smaller ISRA would be more qualified and have lower acceptance rates because they are likely to perform a better scientific assessment of submissions. Findings strongly support the predictions. The journal acceptance rates range from 12% to 91%, with an average of 54%. Law journals have significantly higher acceptance rates than others while Web of Science and Scopus (WOSS) indexed journals have lower acceptance rates. The proportion of female editors and a number of submissions are found to be non-scientific quality indicators, while all research productivity measures are significantly associated with acceptance rates. Finally, editorial boards of WOSS journals are more selective despite having similar qualifications to other journal boards, suggesting that WOSS indexes provide additional layers of quality national index is unable to provide.

To the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to explicitly test the relation between board publication strategy and acceptance rate. Prior research shows acceptance rates of scientific journals in various fields (Björk, 2021; Haensly et al., 2008; Krueger & Shorter, 2011; Lamb & Adams, 2015; Sugimoto et al., 2013), and editor qualifications (Bedeian et al., 2009; Hardin III et al., 2008; Lindsey, 1976). This study combines these two areas to present a fuller picture. Results would inform the editorial practices and stakeholders in local journals. We acknowledge that findings may not be generalizable to reputable international journals with a diverse editor and author base, as well as to countries where publishing in impact factor journals is mandatory for promotion.

The rest of the study is structured as follows. Section 2 briefly reviews the literature and develops hypothesis. Section 3 explains data and methodology. Section 4 presents results, and Section 5 concludes.

Quality of journal is often a good indicator of the quality of research. Academic promotion and tenure decisions are based on publications in reputable journals across institutions in the global North (Arnold et al., 2003; Fogarty & Liao, 2009). Scientists select target journals carefully, considering reputation, suitability, quality, and review process of journals (Rowley et al., 2022; Solomon & Björk, 2012). A portfolio of quality publications in reputable journals is an asset that scholars are proud to showcase and build their careers on. Although definition of quality varies from one country and institution to another, quantitative quality criteria dominate other aspects of scholarship (Pontika et al., 2022) and impact factor, acceptance rate, and number of citations are frequently used as quality indicators to assess scientific productivity (Hicks, 2012; Ma & Ladisch, 2019). The economics schools in the US may require publications in the top five economics journals for tenure, while many UK business schools require publications in 3- and 4-star journals in the ABS rankings. In Türkiye, any SSCI publication counts regardless of journal ranking and impact factor. Despite different approaches to quality measurement, scholars agree that journal quality is a product of arduous effort by editors and their selection should be based on scientific merit (Brinn & Jones, 2007; Haensly et al., 2008; Hames, 2001; Sharma, 2016). To do otherwise would threaten credibility of the scientific research (Bedeian et al., 2009). Editors define the characteristic of journals, set policies, and determine which papers to accept, leading and influencing the scientific community through their decisions (Bedeian et al., 2009; Lowe & Van Fleet, 2009). Although they may occasionally reject good papers and accept bad papers (Cherkashin et al., 2009), editors often contribute significantly to the content and quality of the manuscripts through their selection of suitable reviewers and guidance. Editors’ accumulated research experience and conception of research would affect their research agenda (Brew et al., 2016; Santos & Horta, 2020), review process and ultimately journal quality.

Prior studies use bibliometric methods to investigate editorial board diversity (Brinn & Jones, 2008; Burgess & Shaw, 2010; Hodgson & Rothman, 1999; Pan & Zhang, 2014), journal acceptance rates (Björk, 2021; Conley, 2012; Krueger & Shorter, 2011; Lamb & Adams, 2015; Randall & Gibson, 1990; Wardle, 2012), and even to rank institutions and countries by their representation on the editorial boards of reputable journals (Braun et al., 2007; Chan & Fok, 2003; Kaufman, 1984; Urbancic, 2011; Wu et al., 2018). Others investigate scholarly output of editorial board members in accounting, finance, and economics journals (Bedeian et al., 2009; Hardin III et al., 2008; Lowe & Van Fleet, 2009; Walters, 2015; Zdenek, 2018) and demonstrate a significant linkage between editorial board membership and faculty research productivity (Wang, 2018). Only a few studies examine the relationship between editorial board and journal quality. For example, Haensly et al. (2008) demonstrate that journal acceptance rates are inversely correlated with impact factors and other quality indicators in economics and finance. Sugimoto et al. (2013) show that acceptance rates are negatively related to journal citations and impact factors. Petersen et al. (2017) provide evidence in favor of the insignificance of board diversity with respect to journal quality rankings, arguing that forming a diverse qualified editorial board is complicated. Xie et al. (2019) develop a new editorial quality index based on h-index of editors. Wu et al. (2020) find that board diversity is significantly correlated to journal quality only when dominating US-based editors are excluded. Liwei and Chunlin (2015) examine the association between board scientific output and journal quality, finding weak correlation between them. However, their restriction of board publications to the last five years considerably weakens the power of their construct and generalizability of their finding. Two studies investigate the connection between journal quality and insider bias. Youk and Park (2019) document that endogenous (inside) publications in communication journals are associated with fewer citations. Zdenek and Lososova (2018) show that editors’ self-publication is negatively related to measures of journal quality. Overall, these studies demonstrate that more reputable journals tend to be more selective and inside publications are inversely correlated with quality. This study relies on acceptance rates to measure journal quality for two reasons: i) Acceptance rate is a direct product of editorial assessment and reflects editorial discretion and their degree of selectivity, in contrast to impact factor that editors have little control over. Therefore, a causal and direct relationship between editorial board composition and acceptance rates could be observed. ii) None of the national journals used in this study have impact factor and an alternative quality proxy for local journals is required. Based on the discussion, the following hypothesis is proposed.

Proposition: High-quality (low-quality) editorial boards are negatively (positively) associated with journal acceptance rates. This proposition yields two related hypotheses below.

H1: Greater editorial board engagement with reputable international journals is associated with more selective editorial assessment and lower acceptance rates.

Data covers 219 journals indexed in the Social Sciences category of the national TR DIZIN index. The sample originates from Tutuncu (2023), who studies insider bias in 258 journals. None of the journals voluntarily disclosed their acceptance rate but a policy change led to disclosure in February 2023. This disclosure revealed acceptance rate and review time statistics for the year 2022. Therefore, our data covers 2022 acceptance rates, and it does not contain self-reporting bias. Information on acceptance rates and editors is collected from Dergipark website and from the latest issues of journals in December 2022 and January 2023. Dergipark is an official platform provided to publishers free of charge, on the condition that journals publish all articles in open access mode. Eliminating journals managing review process outside Dergipark system leaves 219 journals as final sample. Overall, data includes 2,367 editorial board members, consisting of chief editor, co-editor and field editor positions. Data includes 285 chief editors, 286 co-editors, 47 editorial assistants, and 1,749 field editors. The average journal board consists of 11 editors, of which 8.4 are field editors. This is likely to be due to lack of specialization as local journals tend to cover a variety of scientific areas and require more field editors than usual. Education journals have the largest boards with 15.4 editors per journal while Art journals have the smallest boards with 7.75 editors per journal. Technical editors and members of advisory boards are excluded because they are not part of the editorial review and have no influence on decisions. Research output of editors covering their entire publication history is collected from YÖK Akademik (https://akademik.yok.gov.tr/AkademikArama) and Web of Science. The former is the official database for Turkish academics’ resumes and is used to collect data on inside publications in national journals. The publication records here are maintained by academics themselves as they are required to electronically submit their applications for academic incentive schemes and promotions. Therefore, data on national publications come from academics’ own entries. Only peer-reviewed and original articles are counted, articles in practitioner journals, book chapters and book reviews are excluded. From WOS, data on the number of SSCI papers, first-authored papers (including ESCI), and citations are collected for each person. If an editor publishes a paper in one of the journals published by his/her university, it is counted as inside publication. This definition is consistent with prior studies on insider bias (Laband & Piette, 1994; Tutuncu et al., 2022, Yoon, 2013), and applies a broader perspective than editorial self-publications in their own journals (Bosnjak et al., 2011; Brogaard et al., 2014; Luty et al., 2009; Xu et al., 2021). As Turkish universities are prominent publishers, institutional affiliation can prove useful across many journals. However, the definition still provides a conservative approximation of inside publication output, as co-author affiliations and informal networks are not investigated for secondary inside connections.

A primary concern is the calculation of acceptance rates, as calculation methodology may vary across journals (Haensly et al., 2008). Fortunately, Dergipark discloses the number of accepted and rejected articles. Acceptance rates are calculated uniformly as the number of accepted articles divided by the sum of accepted and rejected articles. Four measures of research productivity are used as quality proxies: i) Sum of the number of inside publications of editorial board members normalized by board size (INSIDER) represents low-quality board, as high-quality research does not require inside connections to pass review stages and can be published in more reputable journals. These publications are likely to have ethical issues arising from conflicts of interest and cannot be classified as high-quality, ii) Sum of the number of editorial board SSCI articles normalized by board size stands for high-quality board, as more stringent review process of SSCI journals often results in the rejection of inappropriate submissions without leniency. SSCI journals are officially recognized as high-quality by Turkish academic regulations, however, publishing in them is not mandated. Social scientists publishing in SSCI journals do so without regulatory enforcement and often at the expense of slower career progress, which is another indicator of their scholarly quality, iii) Following Grancay et al. (2017), who utilized Herfindahl Index to compare local and international article output of Ukrainian professors, a variant of Herfindahl Index, inside-to-SSCI article ratio (ISRA) is used to evaluate publication strategy of editors. ISRA is calculated as sum of the board inside papers divided by the combined sum of inside and SSCI publications of board members. This measure ranges from 0 to 1. A board without SSCI publication takes the value of 1, while the value for a board without inside publication is 0. Larger values show greater use of institutional affiliations and lower quality, while lower values show greater use of SSCI journals to publish and higher editorial quality. Therefore, ISRA is inversely related to quality and should be positively related to acceptance rates if less qualified boards are less selective, iv) Citation per editor (CITATION) is calculated as the sum of WOS citations of editors divided by the board size.^② Publications and citations are counted without adjusting for the number of co-authors in publications (e.g., Lindsey, 1976). This adjustment could provide better results (in terms of fewer SSCI publications and greater ISRA) and emphasize the measures of quality even more as most high-quality publications are often products of collaborative work. However, it is not practical and unnecessary burden to correct for the number of authors due to large number of observations. Results are strong enough to validate the predictions.

Journals are grouped by faculty as they are issued by the related faculty and institutes. This results in 8 distinct categories: General Social Science (GSS) journals that publish in all areas of social sciences, including economics, education, religious sciences, history and linguistics. Education journals are issued by faculty of education. Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences (FEAS) journals cover economics and business-related disciplines. Faculty of Science and Literature (FEF) journals publish on archaeology, geography, history, literature, linguistics, psychology, and sociology. Theology, Law, Communication, and Art are other journal categories published by related faculties. As dependent variable is a proportion and follows a binomial distribution, ordinary least squares regression is not suitable.^③ Therefore, the following generalized linear model (GLM) with logit link (Baum, 2008) is used to formally test the hypotheses: 1 AR=α+BoardQuality(INSIDER,SSCI,ISRA1,ISRA2,CITATION)+WOSS+FEMALE+SUBMIT+AGE+GSS+EDUCATION+FEAS+FEF+THEOLOGY+LAW+ε \[\begin{align} & AR=\alpha +BoardQuality\left( INSIDER,SSCI,ISRA1,ISRA2,CITATION \right)+ \\ & \,\,\,\,\,\,\,\,\,\,\,\,WOSS+FEMALE+SUBMIT+AGE+GSS+EDUCATION+ \\ & \,\,\,\,\,\,\,\,\,\,\,\,FEAS+FEF+THEOLOGY+LAW+\varepsilon \\ \end{align}\]

Acceptance rate (AR) is found as number of accepted submissions divided by the sum of accepted and rejected submissions. ISRA1 stands for publication strategy of editorial boards, calculated as board inside papers divided by the sum of board inside papers and board SSCI papers. ISRA2 is used to provide additional robustness, using a number of first-authored WOS publications (FWOS) including ESCI indexed ones. Crediting only the first author eliminates the hazard of multiple counting associated with multi-authored papers. SUBMIT is natural logarithm of the number of submissions and is included in the model as journals receiving a larger number of submissions could be more selective (Conley, 2012; Donovan, 2013; Haensly et al., 2009; Tiokhin et al., 2021). WOSS is a dummy variable for journals indexed in Web of Science and/or Scopus. It is included in the model to control for journal quality and recognition. FEMALE is the ratio of women calculated as the number of women editors divided by board size. Women are traditionally underrepresented on editorial boards (Addis and Villa, 2003; Burgess and Shaw, 2010). Higher female representation on editorial board is credited with less editorial bias (Stegmaier et al., 2011) and is associated with high-performing editors (Metz et al., 2016). Therefore, journals with greater female editor ratio are expected to conduct more selective editorial assessment. AGE is natural logarithm of journal age. It is included to control for journal reputation, as older journals are likely to have established institutional culture and tradition, which their editorial work needs to live up to. GSS, EDUCATION, FEAS, FEF, THEOLOGY, and LAW are dummy variables for respective fields. Scatterplots of variables are provided in Figure 1 through Figure 8. An increasing acceptance rate trend is clearly visible for low-quality variables (INSIDER, ISRA1, ISRA2), while high-quality board proxies (SSCI, WOSS, FEMALE, AGE, SUBMIT) have a declining acceptance rate trend.

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Figure 3.

Figure 4.

Figure 5.

Figure 6.

Figure 7.

Figure 8.

Table 1 reports summary statistics for submissions and acceptance rates. GSS and FEAS have the largest number of journals and submissions, followed by Education, FEF, and Theology journals. 29 (13%) of the journals are indexed in WOSS. The journals have an average of 83.6, a maximum of 306, and a total of 18,317 submissions that were decided in 2022. The overall acceptance rate for submissions is 51%, indicating that more than half of all submissions were accepted. The average acceptance rate ranges from 47% for Art journals to 68% for Law journals. All fields have acceptance rates of around and over 50%. FEF journals have significantly higher acceptance rate than FEAS (t-value = 2.13, p<0.05), while Law journals have higher acceptance rate than all other journals (vs. GSS: t-value = 2.60, p<0.05; vs. Education: t-value=2.96, p<0.00; vs. FEAS: t-value = 3.80, p<0.00; vs. FEF: t-value = 1.88, p<0.1; vs. Theology: t-value = 2.97, p<0.00; vs. Communication: t-value = 2.49, p<0.05; vs. Art: t-value = 2.97, p<0.00). Acceptance rates for other journal pairs are not significantly different. WOSS journals have 43% average acceptance rate, 12% lower than 55% average acceptance of NONWOSS journals, the difference being highly significant (t-value = 3.60, p<0.000). These statistics are quite high and contrast with prior research showing that the majority of journals in Business, Economics and Finance have acceptance rates below 30% (Haensly et al., 2008; Krueger & Shorter, 2011; Sugimoto et al., 2013), and even below 20% (Conley, 2012; Randall & Gibson, 1990). This indicates that most Turkish national journals are not competitive and do not execute a robust editorial assessment. Rather, high acceptance rates are comparable to medical science journals which are often criticized for their lack of methodological commitment (Smith, 2006) and to megajournals criticized for their lack of originality and lax peer review (Buriak, 2015; Spezi et al., 2017).^④ Overall, results show that Turkish national journals are not selective, calling into question the qualification of their editorial boards. To provide more insight into their characteristics, Table 2 provides descriptive statistics for journal boards.

The average journal board in Table 2 has 3.72 insider publications per editor in comparison to just 1.24 SSCI and 1.12 FWOS papers, indicating a clear preference for inside publications among editorial board members. Education boards have the most prolific editors, and they publish twice as many SSCI papers as their nearest competitor: FEAS boards. Most of the Theology, Law, and Communication journal boards have 0 SSCI publication and citation, indicated by their 0 medians. Despite a lack of SSCI publication record, editors of these journals publish inside papers in significant numbers. In total, 60 journal boards have 0 SSCI publication and 62 boards have 0 citation. These statistics contrast with just 1 journal board that does not have inside publication, showing where the priorities of editorial boards lie. Publication strategies of editors are illustrated more clearly by ISRA variables. 0.79 average ISRA1 indicates a strong preference for insider articles over SSCI papers. The average journal is 23.7 years old and average editorial board has 37.7% female editor ratio. At individual level, 924 (39% of) editors are women, and their representation among chief editors is slightly lower 30.8% as 88 of 285 chief editors are women. At board level, 22 journals are fully staffed by male editors while only 8 journals are fully staffed by female editors. These findings are consistent with prior evidence that women are more likely to be underrepresented on editorial boards (Addis & Villa, 2003; Metz et al., 2016).

Table 3 reports journals with the largest acceptance rates. We do not intend to discuss individual editorial policies of journals, and only include journals that accept at least 75% of the submissions. The full list can be found in the Appendix. 27 journals have acceptance rates over 75%. FEF and GSS each have 6 journals on the list, followed by Law (5 journals) and Theology (4 journals). FEAS has only 2 journals on the list, despite having 43 journals in the sample. 2 ESCI journals, Bilimname and Sanat Tarihi Yilligi are also on the list, with 81% and 78% acceptance rates respectively. 11 of the boards have 0 SSCI publication, including ESCI-indexed Bilimname. Overall, these least selective journals receive 2,029 submissions and on average accept 81% of them. Their editorial boards publish a total of 1005 inside papers and just 204 SSCI papers, indicating that their publication strategy heavily leans on executing low-quality research and utilizing institutional affiliations. Table 4 presents journals with the lowest acceptance rates to allow comparison with the most selective journals. Only 6 journals have acceptance rate of 20% and lower. The list is led by GSS (6 journals), FEAS, Education and FEF (5 journals each), and Theology (4 journals). 2 Art journals make to the list, while Law and Communication journals are absent. 9 of the journals are indexed in WOSS, compared to only 2 in the least selective journals. Overall, these most selective journals receive 3,053 submissions and publish 26% of them. Their boards publish significantly more SSCI papers and fewer inside papers. 66% of their publications consist of inside papers compared to 87% for the least selective journals. The differences in research productivity do not result from board sizes as the more selective journals have slightly fewer editorial board members (259 vs. 252 in total). Moreover, the number of SSCI publications more than doubles while the number of inside papers decreases by 290 and the number of citations per editor rises from 19.6 to 31.3. The differences in acceptance rates (t-value = 39.14, p<0.00) and ISRA1 are statistically significant (t-value = 3.28, p<0.00), suggesting that publication strategies of editors on the least and most selective journal boards are significantly different.

Table 5 reports Pearson correlations between variables in Eq. (1). Acceptance rate is negatively correlated with high-quality indicators (SSCI, CITATION) and positively correlated with low-quality indicators (INSIDER, ISRA1, ISRA2). Number of submissions (SUBMIT), Web of Science/Scopus coverage and female board representation are all negatively correlated with acceptance rate, indicating that they are associated with greater selectivity. Correlation results support the hypothesis that higher-quality boards are more selective. Table 6 presents multivariate logistic regressions. Two model specifications with journal level data (N = 216) and individual editor level data (N = 2,360) are estimated to fully utilize potential of the data and provide additional robustness. All editor quality coefficients are negative and significant, conclusively showing that high (low) quality board indicators are associated with lower (higher) acceptance rates. WOSS, SUBMIT, and FEMALE are non-scientific quality indicators as they are associated with lower acceptance rates. AGE appears to be the weakest quality indicator, as it is weakly significant in several models. A similar interpretation could apply to CITATION. The indicator is only weakly significant in Journal5 model. Editor regressions provide considerably stronger results as all variables and controls are highly significant. Overall, results strongly support the hypotheses that editorial board quality and journal acceptance rates are negatively associated. If acceptance rate is any indicator of journal quality, then more qualified boards would lead to higher-quality local journals.

We perform additional tests to address potential selection bias through a two-stage Heckman selection procedure. The selection bias may arise from the quality effect of Web of Science/Scopus indexed journals. In other words, lower acceptance rates in those journals may be a result of their recognition by reputable indexes. These journals are theoretically able to select more qualified editors as their international recognition would allow them to do so. However, we suspect that editor pool of these journals is constrained by their institutional affiliation. Indeed, we find that 215 (82%) of 261 WOSS journal editors are employed by their home institution. Corroborating our suspicion, correlations in Table 5 show no significant association between WOSS index and board quality measures, suggesting that their editors are not selected on the basis of scientific productivity. WOSS appears to be negatively correlated with acceptance rates for no other reason. To account for WOSS selection effect on acceptance rates, we perform a probit regression to estimate the likelihood of WOSS coverage and obtain Inverse Mills ratio, which is used to augment the second stage regression. We model WOSS index coverage as a function of English article ratio in a journal (ENGLISH), female editor ratio (FEMALE), and natural logarithm of journal age (AGE). English proficiency is an important indicator of academic qualification as it is often a precondition to publish in mainstream journals (Curry & Lillis, 2004; Uzuner, 2008). High-performing editors are more likely to be comfortable working with women and create a more gender balanced editorial board (Metz et al., 2016), as they prioritize academic performance over gender. Therefore, WOSS journals could be expected to have greater women representation. Journal age is included to proxy for established journals’ institutional culture and tradition. The estimated probit model is as follows: 2 WOSS=α+AGE+FEMALE+ENGLISH+ε \[WOSS=\alpha +AGE+FEMALE+ENGLISH+\varepsilon \]

In the second stage, ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions are conducted with added Inverse Mills ratio from the first stage probit. Following Baum (2008), acceptance rate, dependent variable in the OLS models, is logit transformed to make it suitable for use in linear regressions. The following second stage regression is specified: 3 AR=α+BoardQuality(SSCI,INSIDER,ISRA,CITATION)+WOSS+SUBMIT+InverseMilss+Controls+ε \[\begin{align} & AR=\alpha +BoardQuality\left( SSCI,INSIDER,ISRA,CITATION \right)+ \\ & \,\,\,\,\,\,\,\,\,\,\,WOSS+SUBMIT+InverseMilss+Controls+\varepsilon \\ \end{align}\]

Results in Table 7 are consistent with prior logistic regression findings. Higher editor quality indicators SSCI and CITATION are negatively related to acceptance rates, while lower editor quality variables INSIDER and ISRA1 are positively associated. Inverse Mills ratio is significant in all models, validating the selection effect of WOSS indexes. Overall, we find considerable support for our predictions about editorial behavior that the type of their engagement with academic journals determines their editorial style. We can conclude that editors engaging and publishing more with SSCI journals impose more selectivity on submissions while editors publishing low-quality insider papers perform less selective editorial reviews.

This study provides new evidence on the relationship between editorial board quality and acceptance rates using a set of Turkish national journals. Turkish career regulations have a clear definition of quality publication, allowing us to distinguish high-quality publications from low-quality ones. Specifically, SSCI journals are officially recognized as more reputable outlets than national journals. Despite the implicit quality indication of the former, most academics opt for the latter as national journals offer an easier path to promotion. Personal networks and institutional affiliations could also be helpful to publish in local journals and meet performance targets when 87% of the editorial positions are occupied by editors from the same institution, while they lack similar networks in SSCI journals and need to pass a stringent review process by alien editors to publish. The research is designed on these two contrasting edges and argues that publication history of editors demonstrates their publication strategy and experience, based on which they manage journals and evaluate submissions. Articles in affiliated journals (inside publications) are termed as low-quality as they do not pass a stringent editorial review. We purposefully avoid defining all local articles as low-quality work to do justice to good locally focused research that does not find publication opportunities in reputable journals.

Using normalized total board productivity measures, this study documents a significant relationship between higher quality boards and lower acceptance rates. We develop a novel variable, ISRA, to measure publication strategy of editors and predict that editors publishing inside articles rather than SSCI articles are likely to conduct less selective evaluation of submissions, either because they are underqualified and lack capacity to filter out defective submissions or because they are unwilling to do so due to potential repercussions in small local scientific communities. Journals with more qualified boards would have the capacity and willpower to conduct a more selective assessment of the submissions, reducing acceptance rate. Results support our predictions. Overall, journals have a 54% average acceptance rate, while only 6 journals have 20% and lower acceptance rate. Even journals indexed in Web of Science/Scopus accept 43% of all submissions. These statistics are some of the highest in the literature for Social Sciences journals and indicate lenient editorial assessment or a complete lack of it. Many journal boards have questionable scientific qualifications, illustrated by 60 (27% of) journal boards having 0 SSCI publications and 62 boards having 0 citations. Results indicate that national journals require a major overhaul. The authorities must stipulate a minimum record of quality research output to qualify for editorial positions, as results suggest that scientific merit is not a condition for selection to editorial boards. Disclosing acceptance rates and enhancing transparency is a step in the right direction. However, weak and unqualified boards result in the publication of many unoriginal and repetitive articles with defective methodology and questionable scholarly research practice, leading to widespread practice of academic favoritism such as publishing by means of personal and institutional networks. Quality of editorial boards is necessary not only to improve quality of journals and local scientific research but also to prevent promotion of low-skilled academics whose decisions often determine issues related to science and higher education.

This study has implications for small journals trying to break out of the local zone and transform into mainstream. Universities and other publishers of these journals may want to begin with appointing qualified editorial boards to kickstart transformation. Absent capable editors, journals will be vulnerable to all sorts of severe editorial bias and bound to remain within their local corner. This study relies on insider publications to define low-quality research and avoids labelling all national publications as lower quality. A new study can incorporate all national publications to present a broader picture of the publication strategies of editors. Further, this research covers only national journals in Social Sciences, and it can be extended by including journals in other areas. The diversity and qualification of their editorial boards is a matter of interest to the scientific community. A third extension can use Scopus data and CiteScore to generate more insights. Finally, similar studies could be conducted in the (semi)peripheral countries such as China, Poland, Ukraine, and Hungary where local journals enjoy popularity among academics. A major limitation of the study is the generalisability and validity of its findings in international context. Future studies could provide evidence on the association between acceptance rate and editorial boards of reputable international journals.