How innovative are editors?: evidence across journals and disciplines

Journal editors play a crucial role in the scientific publication system, as they make the final decision on acceptance or rejection of manuscripts. Some critics, however, suspect that the more innovative a manuscript is, the less likely it will be accepted for publication. Especially top-tier journals are accused of rejecting innovative research. As evidence is only anecdotal, this article empirically examines the demand side for innovative research manuscripts. I assess journal editors’ innovativeness, i.e. their general predispositions for innovative research manuscripts. As antecedents to innovativeness, personal and contextual factors are taken into account. I differentiate the concept of innovativeness in research by distinguishing three dimensions: innovativeness in terms of research problems, theoretical approaches, and methodological approaches. Drawing on an international web-based survey, this study is based on responses of 866 journal editors. The article sheds light on editors’ inclination toward accepting different forms of innovative research for publication. Overall, findings indicate that individual characteristics, such as editorial risk-taking or long-term orientation, are more decisive than journal-related characteristics regarding innovativeness. However, editors of older journals turn out to be less open toward new research problems and a u-shaped relationship between a journal’s rating score and editor’s willingness to adopt new theoretical approaches exists. Most surprisingly, editors’ consensus orientation regarding reviewer recommendations is positively associated with methodological innovativeness.