A key indicator for your journal will be the decisions rendered by your editors. These are generally broken down into initial decisions and final decisions rendered in a given year.
For initial decisions, there is usually interest in how many submissions received immediate decisions, such as immediate accept or immediate reject decisions. This helps your editorial staff to get a feel for the quality of submissions your journal is receiving. Additionally, submissions that are sent through peer review require more journal resources, such as the number of editors and reviewers required, than manuscripts that receive an immediate decision.
The decision tree is an excellent chart that shows many key indicators all at once. This chart shows the percentage of manuscripts that received immediate decisions, as well as the percentage that went through peer review. From the chart, you can see how many manuscripts received a reject decision after peer review. This gives you an idea of how effective your first look or triage review of the incoming submissions is for your journal. For more information on interpreting this type of decision tree chart, read our blog post Decision Tree for Initial Decisions.
You may also want to include a chart that shows a breakdown of decisions by decision type. This type of chart can help you see how certain decisions, such as immediate rejects, are changing over time. Since this is a more complex chart, it would be a good idea to also include a data table.
If your journal focuses on the number of rejections at initial decision, then include a table that includes the percent rejected at initial decision. You may also want to include a chart that shows only the immediate reject decisions at initial decision. In our example below, the journal had only just started using the immediate reject decision as of 2020.
Many journals also try to track how long, on average, it takes a submission to receive an initial decision. Since the goal is to see how peer review is going, this value is more meaningful if you exclude manuscripts that received immediate reject and immediate accept decisions. In our examples, you will note that for years 2017-2019, the values are basically the same. However, this journal initiated an immediate reject decision as of 2020. So, through the lighter blue chart (that includes the manuscripts that received an immediate reject decision) shows a slight decrease in the time taken to receive an initial decision, you will note that the darker blue chart (with immediate reject manuscripts excluded), shows a slight increase in the time needed to receive an initial decision. The darker blue chart’s data is not skewed by manuscripts that did not go through peer review and therefore, gives a more accurate view of the journal’s actual expected time to initial decision. If you do choose to exclude immediate reject/accept decision types in your timing charts, be sure to note that on your chart.
The other type of decision charts that you will want to include in your editorial report are final decision charts. Charts, such as this clustered column chart, that show how many of each decision type were rendered over time are valuable so that your editorial staff understands how the submissions are performing as compared to previous years. Since some decision types are not represented every year, it is a good practice to also include a table to clarify this point for your readers.
If your journal has a preference for some types of manuscripts, you may want to include a chart or table that shows the % accepted by manuscript type. Your editorial staff can use this information to determine how strict or lenient they may wish to be in the upcoming year to affect next year’s % accept results.
