Why do some papers get desk rejected from the European Journal for Sport and Society?
With the advent of online submissions and a proliferation of academic periodicals (including many wholly online, open-access scientific journals), the number of prospective academic papers entering the review process has increased over the past decades.
The European Journal for Sport and Society (EJSS) is no different, seeing almost a 200% increase in the numbers of papers submitted yearly between 2017 and 2021. Concurrently, the journal’s print capacity has remained constant throughout this period, resulting in a lower proportion of papers being published.
Inevitably, such changes place increasing pressure on our Editorial and Scientific Boards, as well as the wider sociology of sport community, to manage this high volume of manuscripts and to conduct peer reviews. Consequently, EJSS feel that it is important to communicate how and why a paper might not pass the screening processes.
So, why might a paper be ‘desk rejected’ from EJSS by the Editorial boardhave? They outline three interrelated issues in this article:
- Failure to meet the journal’s scope and style regulations.
- Scope of contribution: the manuscript does not make an original and significant scientific contribution.
- ubstantive and scientific issues: for example a lack of theoretical framework or evidence of methodological rigour.