Seasonal bias in editorial decisions? A study using data from chemistry

In a recent paper in Learned Publishing, Shalvi, Baas, Handgraaf, and De Dreu examined whether the time point of the submission of a paper to a journal affects the probability of its publication,1 exploring ‘whether an additional and somewhat arbitrary factor, the seasonal overloading of editorial desks caused by the amount of submitted work, influences the likelihood of acceptance’ (p. 118). To answer this question of a seasonal bias in editorial decisions they used the data on all papers published between 2003 and 2006 in the journals Psychological Science (PS) and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (PSPB). Their analysis of the data yielded different results for the two journals:1