Science Education Quarterly editorial activity report (2025)
This report provides a review of the editorial workflow, processing efficiency, and selection trends for Science Education Quarterly during the 2025 calendar year (January 1, 2025 – December 31, 2025), alongside a baseline comparison against cumulative historical metrics.
Year 2025 was marked by a deliberate push toward greater editorial selectivity and sharpened processing timelines as the journal continues to solidify its standing in the science education community.
The journal received 38 new submissions in 2025, accounting for more than half of its total historical submission pool (67 papers). This steady influx underscores growing author awareness and trust. A total of 12 papers were successfully published across our quarterly issues this year, keeping our publication pipeline healthy, predictable, and strictly on schedule.
Our editorial board dramatically tightened review loops this year. Let’s look at the numbers:
- The time to a first editorial decision dropped from a historical average of 20 days to a nimble 12 days.
- Nobody enjoys a rejection letter, but if one is coming, authors appreciate a fast turnaround. Our average time to reject held steady at 16 days, preventing out-of-scope or unaligned manuscripts from languishing in editorial limbo.
- "Days to Accept" dropped significantly to 184 days (roughly 6 months), down from the historical baseline of 232 days. While six months might feel like a test of patience for eager researchers, it reflects our dedication to thorough, constructive peer review cycles rather than rushed rubber-stamping.
The most striking shift in 2025 is the journal's tightening selectivity framework:
- Our annual acceptance rate adjusted to 22% (down from a cumulative 31%).
- Conversely, the rejection rate rose to 78%, driven heavily by a 65% desk reject rate.
The high desk-rejection rate indicates a strong, protective filter at the editorial desk stage. We are successfully weeding out manuscripts that fail to meet quality, ethical, or scoping criteria before they exhaust our pool of volunteer peer reviewers.
