Guides · Submitting and peer review

Desk rejection: why journals reject papers without review, and how to avoid it

A desk rejection is the editor's decision to reject a manuscript before it goes to reviewers. At leading marketing journals it ends a large share of submissions: about a third at the Journal of Marketing in 2013 to 2015 and typically 40 to 60 percent at the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. Editors describe two main causes: the paper does not fit the journal, or it does not make a sufficient contribution.

How often it happens

The Journal of Marketing received about 550 submissions a year between 2013 and 2015. Roughly 65 percent went out for review, so about a third were rejected at the desk, and the overall acceptance rate was 8 percent. The editor named lack of generalizability as the leading reason for desk rejection.^[1]

The Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science accepted 7.5 percent of submissions in 2014 and reports that it typically rejects 40 to 60 percent at the desk. These are self-reported figures for the years stated; current rates may differ.^[2]

What editors decide at the desk

The editor's first reading is a screen, not a review. At the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science a paper must first fit the journal's editorial focus and then show a sufficient contribution; failing either hurdle ends the process before reviewers are assigned.^[2]

Editors of other journals describe the same screen. At the Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, most desk rejections and later rejections came with the same comment: the manuscript did not show an adequate contribution to the existing literature.^[3]

Seven checks before you submit

• State the contribution without mentioning your data. Papers that start from a general question or a model and simply report what the data show tend to be rejected, because they confirm what the field already assumes.^[4]
• Change what readers believe, not only where a pattern holds. Testing a known effect or theory again in a new country or product setting is a common reason papers fail to reach publication.^[2][3]
• Treat the gap as a reason to look, not as the contribution. Being the first study of a topic or setting does not show a contribution unless you explain why the issue matters and what it changes.^[3]
• Keep claims within what the design supports. Cross-sectional designs reveal associations, yet causal language in titles and abstracts of such studies has become common, and readers take it as causal evidence.^[5]
• Explain why, not only what. References, data, lists of variables, diagrams and hypotheses are not theory by themselves; theory explains why a relationship occurs and under which conditions.^[6][7]
• Make one sharp contribution. A grand model with many paths, or a long list of hypotheses that restate known relationships, adds little; a few insightful hypotheses do more.^[3]
• Check that the journal is the paper's natural home. Editors advise modelling a submission on recent papers in the journal that use a similar design, and reject papers outside the journal's focus, such as behavioural studies with no link to managerial outcomes in a managerial journal.^[2]

What makes a contribution

Reviewers judge a theoretical contribution by asking what is new, so what, and why so, and by checking the what, how, why and boundary conditions of the argument.^[7]

In marketing, a conceptual contribution can envision a new idea, explicate an existing one, relate ideas to each other or debate them. Ideas are valued when they challenge what readers assume, not merely because they are new.^[8]

Findings become interesting when they are framed as a story: why the result matters, and under which conditions the expected relationship fails or reverses.^[4]

Substance before packaging

Across major marketing journals, how often an article is later cited depends more on what it says, its quality and domain, than on how it is written, such as title length or attention grabbers. The same priority applies at the desk: framing helps a strong contribution be seen, but it does not create one.^[9]

If you were desk rejected

Read the letter for which hurdle failed. If it was fit, choose a journal whose recent papers resemble yours in design and topic before resubmitting.^[2]

If it was contribution, rework the contribution statement and the claims before sending the paper anywhere else. Some journals use reject and resubmit, inviting a new manuscript built on the editor's feedback rather than a revision of the old one.^[1]

All sources here are editorials and essays by editors. They describe what editors look for; they are not tests of which papers get accepted.^[1][2][3]

The evidence behind this

• Marketing knowledge: how it is made and when to trust it
• Empirical generalizations in marketing: what the research shows

References

1. V. Kumar (2016). My Reflections on Publishing in Journal of Marketing. Journal of Marketing.
2. Robert W. Palmatier (2016). Editorial: the past, present, and future of JAMS. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.
3. Cheng Lu Wang (2022). Editorial – The misassumptions about contributions. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, 16(1), 1–2.
4. Cheng Lu Wang (2025). Editorial: Demonstrating contributions through storytelling. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing.
5. Calvin Isch, Timothy G. Dorr, Neil Fasching, Grace Jennings, Duncan J. Watts (2026). Quantifying the prevalence and impact of overreaching causal claims in social science. Nature Human Behaviour.
6. Robert I. Sutton, Barry M. Staw (1995). What Theory is Not. Administrative Science Quarterly, 40(3), 371–384.
7. David A. Whetten (1989). What Constitutes a Theoretical Contribution?. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 490–495.
8. Deborah J. MacInnis (2011). A Framework for Conceptual Contributions in Marketing. Journal of Marketing, 75(4), 136–154.
9. Stefan Stremersch, Isabel Verniers, Peter C. Verhoef (2007). The Quest for Citations: Drivers of Article Impact. Journal of Marketing.

Bibliographic details only. Follow the DOI to read each study at its publisher.