A fast “rejected for scope” decision can feel like a dead end especially when the editor adds a crucial qualifier: the work appears sound, but it does not fit the journal. Increasingly, that message is paired with an option to transfer the…

Open access (OA) journals and traditional publishers both aim to communicate rigorous research, but their manuscript-formatting expectations often diverge in ways that materially affect submission speed, peer review, and production. One…

The economics of scholarly publishing have shifted substantially in the past decade: global spending on article processing charges (APCs) grew rapidly between 2019 and 2023, and authors increasingly encounter a patchwork of submission,…

A recent large-scale analysis found that only about 3.9% of Web of Science–indexed publications (2010–2019) were cited at least once in policy documents, underscoring how selective the pathway from research to public policy is. This…

A rapidly changing literature and strong pressures for career advancement mean that peer review speed increasingly shapes researchers’ submission choices. During the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, many journals shortened…