Review Time and Acceptance Rates — Rough Guides and How to Look Them Up
A thesis deadline for a Japanese doctoral degree, a promotion review, a grant report. When a submission has a fixed deadline, when you will get an answer matters more than the Impact Factor. This article explains how to look up review times and acceptance rates, and what to do when the clock is running.
Look at the data publishers make public
The major publishers report peer review statistics journal by journal. They are not always easy to find, so here is where to look.
| Publisher | Where to look | What you will find |
|---|---|---|
| Elsevier | "Journal Insights", on the right of the journal home page | Days to first decision, acceptance rate, days from submission to publication |
| Springer Nature / BMC | "Journal metrics" or "About" on the journal home page | Days to first decision, days to acceptance, submissions per year |
| Wiley | The "Journal Metrics" tab | Days to first decision, acceptance rate |
| Oxford University Press | Within "About the journal" | Days to first decision (only for journals that report it) |
| Wolters Kluwer (LWW) | Usually not reported | Ask the editorial office, or estimate from the received and accepted dates on published papers |
| BMJ | "About" → "Editorial policies" | Days to first decision, acceptance rate |
Where nothing is reported, the surest approach is to open a few papers from the journal's latest issue and count the actual turnaround from the "Received / Accepted / Published" dates. Ten papers are enough to see the pattern.
Rough guides by field
These are no more than rough guides, based on the author's own experience and on published figures.
| Type of journal | Time to first decision | Acceptance rate |
|---|---|---|
| Top general medical journals (NEJM, Lancet, JAMA) | A few days for a desk rejection; 4–8 weeks if it goes to peer review | 3–5% |
| Leading specialty journals (Q1) | 4–8 weeks | 10–25% |
| Mid-tier specialty journals (Q2–Q3) | 4–10 weeks | 25–40% |
| Large open access journals (the BMC titles, Frontiers, MDPI) | 3–6 weeks | 40–60% |
| English-language journals of Japanese societies | 4–8 weeks | 30–50% |
If the first decision asks for a revision, expect a further 2–6 weeks from resubmission to the next decision. With one round of major revision, four to six months from submission to acceptance is typical, followed by two to four weeks to publication (online first).
Make desk rejection work for you
A desk rejection — the editor turning the paper down within a few days without sending it out for peer review — is actually a welcome mechanism when you are short of time. Submit to a stretch journal and, if the paper is out of scope, it comes back within one to two weeks, so you can take the shot knowing that the worst case costs you a fortnight. The painful pattern is the opposite one: a rejection two months after the paper went out to reviewers.
Strategy when you are working to a deadline
- Work backwards from the deadline: you want the paper submitted at least six months before it. If you have less time than that, start with journals that have higher acceptance rates.
- Choose journals that publish their review times: a journal that reports the figure tends to feel committed to meeting it.
- Enquire if you hear nothing for two to three months: a polite status enquiry to the editorial office is not rude. It happens more often than you would think that a manuscript has simply been sitting while no reviewer could be found.
- Take transfer offers seriously: moving to another journal from the same publisher, carrying the review comments with you, can save one to two months.
- Use a preprint alongside submission: posting to medRxiv or similar lets you show that the work exists before it is published. Most journals permit preprints, but always check the author guidelines.
The catch with "fast" journals
Be careful with journals that advertise "acceptance within two weeks of submission". Even among journals indexed in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), some conduct peer review as a formality. Speed is appealing, but judge how the journal is regarded by researchers in your field from who publishes there and how those papers are cited.