Interesting that some lower (though still high) prestige journals have lower acceptance rates than higher prestige journals. For instance Phil Quarterly rejects a higher proportion of submissions than Nous . Perhaps this is due to self-selection: people submit only their best papers to the higher prestige journals. This hypothesis might be supported by the sheer numbers: PQ gets far more submissions than Nous .

That’s a possible explanation, Michael. It depends on authors knowing that they are more likely to get feedback from PQ than from Nous (and believing that the feedback would be useful, of course). That’s certainly not something I knew prior to the publication of this data (though the Cullison survey presents much the same picture) . Its also hard to square with the data on Ethics, which receives substantially more submissions that Nous and provides a smaller proportion with reports.

Does “Percentage of submissions that receive at least one referee report” mean “Percentage of submissions where *the author* receives at least one referee report” or “Percentage of submissions where *the editor* receives at least one referee report”? This ambiguity ruins this survey question. For example, while PQ is (in my humble opinion) one of the best run journals out there, I find (based on anecdotal evidence) it hard to believe that in 60% of cases authors are receiving reports. (I find it less hard to believe that in 60% of cases the editor is receiving at least a one-line report recommending rejection.)