The burning question: are rejections the norm in academia?

Brief blogpost reviewing my recent experiences in submitting papers to journals; only one in eight submissions turned out to be "easy", the others all had many obstacles to overcome

Anne-Wil Harzing - Wed 21 Oct 2026 11:40 (updated Wed 21 Oct 2026 15:43)

Well... as always that depends. It very much depends on the discipline you work in and the journals you submit too. But if - like me - you work in International Business and submit to highly ranked journals, rejection definitely is the norm. Most highly ranked journals reject 90-95% of the papers submitted. You all know the real estate adage: location, location, location. In academia we have our own adage: rejection, rejection, rejection.

Rejection happens to *all* of us: PhD students, ECRs, mid-career academics, full professors, research stars, and yes even to editors themselves. The problem is: many academics (and more importantly most Deans) have no idea how hard it is to get a paper accepted these days.

So, to give you a bit of an idea, here is a honest overview of the fate of the papers I worked on in the last three years before I semi-retired in 2024 (see also: Why did I take early retirement & farewell messages).

My experience: one smooth journey (out of eight!)

Out of my four papers submitted to top journals, only one (see: How inpatriation supports subsidiary growth & performance) had a smooth journey: it was conditionally accepted after only one round of revisions at the first journal we submitted to. The whole process from first submission to final acceptance took barely more than a year, which for a top journal is incredibly quick.

But that was after a full year of *very* rigorous preparations and countless drafts by a dream team of three perfectly complementary, but equally committed, authors. Moreover, data collection by the first author - Heejin Kim - had started seven years earlier. Heejin wrote up a lovely blogpost about our paper's journey: From little seed to fully-grown tree: a paper development journey.

What happened to the other three?

➡️ One ended up in a second-tier journal after three rounds of revisions. This was after two earlier desk-rejects at two first-tier journals. You can read about it in here: One size doesn't fit all: MNC knowledge sourcing in Bulgaria by first author Shasha Zhao.

➡️ One ended up in a first-tier journal after three rounds of revisions. This was after being rejected after the first round in two other journals. It became the 6th most cited article published in the journal that year. You can read about it here: Managing (linguistic) diversity in MNCs by first author Sylwia Ciuk.

➡️ One ended up in a first tier journal after two rounds of revisions. But before that it had been rejected after the first round in one journal and the fourth round in another. You can read about it here: Beyond ethnocentrism: why do MNCs send their nationals to subsidiaries? by first author Hyun-Jung Lee.

Between first conception and publication of all three papers were 3-5 years of rewrite after rewrite. And 3-5 years of doubt and wondering whether to give up altogether!

Four more projects: diverted or discarded

➡️ One article ended up in AIB Insights, which seeks "applied articles that provide actionable insights on international business topics. It aims to reach a broad audience, including researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. This was after two attempts at mid-level academic journals. Again Heejin wrote a lovely blogpost about the process: Rejection, withdrawal, and acceptance: A story about message-journal fit.

➡️ One ended up as a newspaper piece - When holiday small talk hurts inclusion at work. This was after desk-rejects for two essay proposals and two practitioner journal proposals. However, the process let me to reflect on a related topic in a white paper: Where are you from? Not "just" a conversation starter. The collaboration with four fellow CYGNA members - Ciara, Clarice, Shea, and Tatiana - was also an absolute delight.

➡️ Two other writing projects were aborted altogether. For one of these projects the data were really too old to get published by the time we got to the 3rd or 4th desk-reject. For the other, I decided to step down as co-author as I felt I could no longer contribute sufficiently.

And yet...

I don't regret working on any of these eight pieces! Why? Because for every single one of them I worked with a different, but equally inspiring, team of academic colleagues. I thoroughly enjoyed the writing interactions and intellectual conversations with them, and learned a lot from them.

As many of these projects started before COVID-19 hit, I also vividly recall our many conversations over lunch and coffee in a variety of London cafés. Being able to work with inspiring people is a privilege that not many employees have. So let's make the most of it and enjoy - as much as we can - research and writing as a process, rather than just focus on the (uncertain) outcome.

The art of academic writing

More generally, I believe that academics might be more content with their chosen careers if they were able to re-focus on academic writing as a form of artistic expression and academic passion, rather than as a simple "box-ticking" exercise for their CV. In our white paper - The art of academic writing - Christa Sathish and I, provide five different perspectives on academic writing:

writing as sculpting (by reduction or by augmentation),
writing as drawing (sketching and landscape drawing),
writing as painting,
writing as music,
writing as acting (both theatre and movie acting).

We also draw some parallels between academics and artists, published as a separate blogpost here: The similarities between academics and artists.

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Anne-Wil Harzing is Emerita Professor of International Management at Middlesex University, London. She is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, a select group of distinguished AIB members who are recognized for their outstanding contributions to the scholarly development of the field of international business. In addition to her academic duties, she also maintains the Journal Quality List and is the driving force behind the popular Publish or Perish software program.

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