The Academic Review Process: How Can We Make it More Efficient?

Abstract

Recently many editors try to reduce the turnaround times of academic journals. Shorter turnaround times, however, will induce many additional submissions of low-quality papers, increasing significantly the workload of editors and referees, and the number of rejections prior to publication. I suggest several ideas how editors can shorten turnaround times and four ideas how they can still avoid frivolous submissions, thus improving the review process efficiency: higher submission fees; requiring authors to review papers in proportion to their submissions; using differential editorial delay - letting low-quality papers wait more; and banning papers from being submitted after a certain number of rejections.

Keywords: Academic publishing, first response times, editorial process, review process, refereeing

JEL Classification: A1, A2, I2, J44, Z0