Scientific papers are more likely to be accepted by a journal if they’re submitted on a week day, a study shows.
Writing in Computer Science the researchers analysed the electronic submission of (about 600) papers to the Journal of the Serbian Chemical Society in order to assess the days of the week that papers were most likely to be accepted or rejected.
According to the researchers weekend days were “not the best time for finalizing and submitting manuscripts”, with Tuesdays being the day during which papers were more likely to be accepted.
However, the authors also reasoned that their finding could be explained by the fact that papers submitted at weekends may be of “lesser quality” than those submitted on weekdays.
“Indeed, it can be conjectured that researchers who submit on Saturday or Sunday do so because they want top get rid of papers; some pressurizing coauthor or themselves expect the manuscript to have been sent by Friday.
Maybe, these scientists are less eager to read very carefully once again their manuscript or are less inspired to redraw conclusions or to demonstrate significant relations in the results or to report to their boss that ”things” have not yet been finalize,” they wrote.