The Experience of Manuscript Rejection: Insights From the JME Associate Editors

Abstract

Manuscript rejection is a common and often unpleasant experience for academics, and management education scholars are no exception. With many business schools globally demanding that faculty focus on publishing in toptier journals, many of which have very low acceptance rates, most of us spend our time writing manuscripts that are rejected at some point in time. Of course, this is not a new phenomenon. More than two decades ago Ashkanasy (2010) argued in an editorial that journal rejection rates in the field of management were increasing and that journal editors (and reviewers) were becoming more demanding, especially in terms of methodological rigor and impact. On a similar point, Day (2011) observed in an AMLE essay that those who experience manuscript rejection represent “the silent majority” and noted further that rejection can negatively impact outcomes including creativity, professional satisfaction, and productivity. In our experience, it is still rare to find colleagues who openly discuss their experiences with rejection, at least outside of settings such as performance reviews. Yet sharing such stories can be both important and cathartic. In this respect, Jaremka et al. (2020, p. 520) discussed their experiences putting together a symposium at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s (SPSP’s) annual conference in which scholars shared how they