How innovative are editors? Evidence across journals and disciplines

Journal editors play a crucial role in the scientific publication system as they make the final decision on acceptance or rejection of manuscripts. Some critics, however, suspect that the more innovative a manuscript is, the... [ view full abstract ]

Journal editors play a crucial role in the scientific publication system as they make the final decision on acceptance or rejection of manuscripts. Some critics, however, suspect that the more innovative a manuscript is, the less likely it will be accepted for publication. As evi-dence is only anecdotal, this paper empirically examines the demand side for innovative re-search manuscripts. I analyze journal editors’ innovativeness, i.e. their general predispositions for innovative research manuscripts, across four disciplines: business and management, chem-istry, economics and medicine. As antecedents to innovativeness I consider personal, journal- and discipline-related determinants. Three dimensions of innovativeness in research are dis-tinguished: innovativeness regarding (a) research problems, (b) theoretical approaches, (c) methodological approaches. The study is based on survey responses from 871 current journal editors. This paper provides empirical evidence on journal editors’ appraisal of different di-mensions of innovative research and reveals systematic differences across journals and disci-plines. Findings indicate that while a journal’s rating score is negatively related to innovative-ness in terms of theories only, editors in chemistry differ from those in business and manage-ment in that they are much more inclined to adopt new research problems as well as new methodological approaches.

Disciplines, higher education, innovation in science, journal editors, journal ranking [ view full abstract ]

Disciplines, higher education, innovation in science, journal editors, journal ranking