Recent decades have seen an immense increase in the publishing rate of scientific output. The question arises how this increase in article quantity relates to the overall quality standards of scientific journals. Tan et al. (2019) set up a simulation study which mimics the processes by which authors generate articles and submit them to journals, followed by peer review and journal acceptance decisions. They find that higher submission rates lead to a decrease in journal standard over time. 

The current study replicates Tan et al.’s simulation, adding robustness checks to investigate for which model parameterisation their findings hold true. What is more, we hypothesise that journal type (traditional versus mega-journal) is an important factor in the relationship between journal standard and submission rate. In particular, we hypothesised and observed that mega-journals do not show a significant decrease in journal standard with increasing submission rate due to their ability to handle submissions in a way that reduces strain on the review system. We indeed identify mega-journals as non-reactive to changes in submission rate while submission rate effects are small, but significant for traditional journals. We also report model parameterisations that drive these effects and end by drawing general conclusions about simulation models for publication processes."