Chinese journals’ chief editors should enhance their response rate to authors

College of Geography and Environmental Science, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou 730070, ChinaChief editors are the souls of journals, and can guarantee a journal’s success by enhancing the efficiency of the manuscript submission and publication process through promptness and speedy response rates to authors. In this study, a total of 867 international journals—indexed by Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index, and 567 Chinese journals—indexed by Chinese Science Citation Database and Chinese Social Science Citation Information database, were randomly selected to explore whether significant differences in the response rate and speed exist between chief editors. 639 chief editor email addresses were obtained for the international journals, whereas 357 email addresses were gathered for the Chinese journals. However, due to mail servers, only 274 international and 330 Chinese editors were successfully contacted. All messages contained a questionnaire geared to determine the total length of time required for the manuscript submission and publication process. After two months, a 100% response rate was achieved for international chief editors, while Chinese chief editors had a significantly lower rate (p < 0.01) of 30.6%. Nevertheless, for both international and Chinese chief editors, 66% and 58% provided a response within 12 hours, respectively. Although several reasons exist for the Chinese journals’ lagging behind international journals, this study demonstrates that the response rate of chief editors to authors may also be a contributing factor. Thus, chief editors of Chinese journals should enhance their response rate to improve the current situation and further contribute to Chinese journals’ success.