Introduction
Determining the acceptance rates of individual journals or within specific disciplines is a necessary part of promotion and tenure activities. Journals with lower article acceptance rates are regarded as more prestigious and being published in one tends to be viewed very positively during the tenure review process.
Cabell's Scholarly Analytics is a great source of journal acceptance rate information. Instructions on using Cabell's are shown below.
If you cannot locate an acceptance rate in Cabell's there are a few other ways to find this information. Some individual journals include their acceptance rates in the 'Information for Authors' section of the journal's website. Another option is to contact the Editor of a journal to see if he/she will share their acceptance rate with you.
Determining the Acceptance Rate
To get started, go to Cabell's and first click on Filters, then Disciplines so that now you see a drop-down menu to choose a Discipline. You can also add a Topic if you'd like but it's not necessary. All Topics under a Discipline will be selected by default, but you deselect any if you'd like.
Once within your disciplinary area, you can search either by topic (click the drop-down arrow to view the available choices) or by individual title (use the Journal name contains box to locate a specific title).
Once you have done this you will see a listing of the journals that fit your search parameters. The Acceptance Rate figures appears in a column in the center of the page.
