The pattern of publishing previously rejected articles in selected journals.

Although it is important to medical school faculty that they publish articles, little has been done to study the process of submitting manuscripts to journals. Specifically, the authors of this study surveyed authors in nine journals read by family medicine teachers to see if their published articles previously had been rejected by other journals. Based on 517 responses from 541 authors (96% response rate), the authors learned that the New England Journal of Medicine had the highest "not previously rejected" rate of 98% and the Journal of the American Medical Association had the lowest rate of 68%. Overall, 11% of the articles published in the eight other journals in the study previously had been rejected by NEJM. It might be interesting for an author whose manuscript is rejected to know the rates of rejection and publication of various journals.