Where Should I Send It? Optimizing the Submission Decision Process

<div><p>How do scientists decide where to submit manuscripts? Many factors influence this decision, including prestige, acceptance probability, turnaround time, target audience, fit, and impact factor. Here, we present a framework for evaluating where to submit a manuscript based on the theory of Markov decision processes. We derive two models, one in which an author is trying to optimally maximize citations and another in which that goal is balanced by either minimizing the number of resubmissions or the total time in review. We parameterize the models with data on acceptance probability, submission-to-decision times, and impact factors for 61 ecology journals. We find that submission sequences beginning with <i>Ecology Letters</i>, <i>Ecological Monographs</i>, or <i>PLOS ONE</i> could be optimal depending on the importance given to time to acceptance or number of resubmissions. This analysis provides some guidance on where to submit a manuscript given the individual-specific values assigned to these disparate objectives.</p></div

3,200,000 different submission strategies (each grey dot) are evaluated in terms of expected number of citations (over 5 years) and number of submissions needed before acceptance (<i>s</i> = 0.002, <i>t</i><i>_R</i> = 30 days).

<p>Highlighted are the top journals for citation-maximizing strategies that minimize resubmissions (efficiency frontier). <i>Ecology Letters</i> dominates the high expected number of citations area, while <i>PLOS ONE</i> is the clear optimal choice at intermediate citations.</p

Ranking of journals based solely on maximizing citations over different periods of time, <i>T</i> (i.e., maximizing <i>C</i> in eq. 1 over all possible submission strategies; probability of getting scooped, <i>s</i> = 0.001, time for revisions after each submission, <i>t</i><i>_R</i> = 30 days).

<p>The time over which to accrue citations, <i>T</i>, changes the optimal submission ranking considerably.</p

Ranking of journals, under a citation maximization framework, for different values of scooping probability, <i>s</i> (<i>T</i> = 10 years, <i>t</i><i>_R</i> = 30 days).

<p>Ranking of journals, under a citation maximization framework, for different values of scooping probability, <i>s</i> (<i>T</i> = 10 years, <i>t</i><i>_R</i> = 30 days).</p

Only file for Salinas et al 2012

Only file for Salinas et al 201