Abstract
This study investigates review time and insider bias in 56,920 papers published by 258 Social Sciences journals. Results show that average review duration in Social Sciences is 134 days. Education (177 days) and Business & Economics (151 days) journals have the longest, Theology (85 days) and Law (87 days) journals have the shortest review time. Insider bias, Web of Science and Scopus (WOSS) coverage, and number of papers published (PUBSCORE) are the three most important factors affecting review time. Insider bias leads to a 18% decrease, while WOSS coverage and PUBSCORE lead to up to 28% increase in review time after controlling for other variables. Overall, 15,804 (27.8%) of all papers are published by insiders, providing them a 43-day (29.7%) speed advantage over outsiders. However, insider ratio can climb up to 73% and insider speed advantage can be as large as 71% for individual journals. The bias is the strongest in Law (35.6%), Theology (34.1%), and General Social Sciences (32.9%) journals, and the weakest in Communication (15.6%) and Education (20%) journals. Research universities dominate academic publishing space through ownership of 128 journals, however, they tend to publish a greater number of insider papers. Full professors are the largest benefiters as their insider ratio goes up to 48.3% in disciplines such as Theology and Law, while assistant professors are the smallest benefiters, consistent with the entrenchment hypothesis. We note that insider bias remains strong as a robust insider base of around 2200 papers continues to be published annually. Review time and insider statistics for journals are provided, contributing to transparency and accountability in academia.
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Data is collected from public sources and will be provided to the journal and reviewers upon request.
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Not applicable. The analysis is performed in Stata software.
Notes
I thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.
Dergipark began to disclose acceptance rate statistics in February 2023. 219 of the journals in this study manage peer review over the Dergipark system and their average acceptance rate is 54%, with a minimum of 12% and a maximum of 91%. Our study covers the period between 2014 and 2021, and authors submitting to these journals did not know acceptance rates.
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Tutuncu, L. All-pervading insider bias alters review time in Turkish university journals. Scientometrics 128, 3743–3791 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04724-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04724-3