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Day of the week submission effect for accepted papers in Physica A, PLOS ONE, Nature and Cell

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Abstract

The particular day of the week when an event occurs seems to have unexpected consequences. For example, the day of the week when a paper is submitted to a peer reviewed journal correlates with whether that paper is accepted. Using an econometric analysis (a mix of log–log and semi-log based on undated and panel structured data) we find that more papers are submitted to certain peer review journals on particular weekdays than others, with fewer papers being submitted on weekends. Seasonal effects, geographical information as well as potential changes over time are examined. This finding rests on a large (178,000) and reliable sample; the journals polled are broadly recognized (Nature, Cell, PLOS ONE and Physica A). Day of the week effect in the submission of accepted papers should be of interest to many researchers, editors and publishers, and perhaps also to managers and psychologists.

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Notes

  1. Scraper worked on the following address: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03784371/.

  2. Scraper worked on the following address: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/browse/ while for the second round of data collection an archive (available on: https://www.dropbox.com/s/n6ldppdrgq11xyo/All%20of%20PLOS.tgz?dl=0) with metadata information regarding PLOS ONE’s papers was used.

  3. Scraper worked on the following address: http://www.nature.com/nature/archive/index.html.

  4. Scraper worked on the following address: http://www.cell.com/.

  5. For each dataset, there are two hypothesis: H0: normal (Gaussian) distribution and H1: the distribution is not a normal one. The statistic test is computed by: \(JB = N\left( {\frac{{{\rm Skewness}^{2} }}{6} + \frac{{{\rm Kurtosis}^{2} }}{24}} \right)\) where N is number of cases and skewness and kurtosis are measured basically by Pearson’s moment coefficients. This test follows a Chi square distribution with two degrees of freedom (most common critical value is: \(\chi_{0.05,2}^{2}\) = 5.99). A detailed presentation about formula used for Kurtosis and its components is available within supplementary information (SI_ Kurtosis.docx).

  6. Data for HDI2016 is available on: http://hdr.undp.org/en/data. It is known that HDI is a geometric mean of three normalized indices (health, education, and income).

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge support from COST Action TD1210 “Analyzing the dynamics of information and knowledge landscapes (KNOWeSCAPE)”. We are grateful to Alexandru Agapie, David Berman, Alexandru Isaic-Maniu, Tudorel Andrei, Gurjeet Dhesi, Sebastian Buhai and Babar Syed for comments on an earlier draft. A preliminary version of the paper was presented to: (i) Cluj Economics and Business Seminar Series (CEBSS), Fall 2017 Session, Babes-Bolyai University and (ii) Annual Conference of the Romanian Academic Economists from Abroad (ERMAS), The 5th edition: 25–27 July 2018, “A. I. Cuza” University, Iasi. Thanks to the consistent feedback offered during the presentations from Cristian Litan, Alexandru Todea, Dorina Lazar, Marcel Voia and Cristian Dragos. David Berman, Peter Richmond and Roxana Herteliu-Iftode were our proof-readers. Finally, we thank to Teresa Dudley (Nature), Jared Graves (Cell), Kenneth A. Dawson (Physica A), and Nick Simon (PLOS ONE) for help with the metadata.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economic Informatics and Cybernetics, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania

    Cătălin Emilian Boja & Marian Dârdală

  2. Department of Statistics and Econometrics, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania

    Claudiu Herţeliu & Bogdan Vasile Ileanu

Authors
  1. Cătălin Emilian Boja
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  2. Claudiu Herţeliu
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  3. Marian Dârdală
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  4. Bogdan Vasile Ileanu
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Contributions

CEB obtained data using a self-designed scraper. CEB, CH, MD, and BVI performed data analysis and manuscript design in its initial and revised versions. CH coordinated the team work.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Claudiu Herţeliu.

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Boja, C.E., Herţeliu, C., Dârdală, M. et al. Day of the week submission effect for accepted papers in Physica A, PLOS ONE, Nature and Cell. Scientometrics 117, 887–918 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2911-7

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