Recently, I received a question from an author who asked me how she should justify writing for The American Biology Teacher in her tenure application because her dean did not think this was the best use of time. To address this frustrating question requires some background.

First, let's talk about two often-proposed “guardians” of scholarly quality, rejection rate and impact factor. These terms may be all-but-unknown to many of our readers but loom large in the minds of many university-based writers. Rejection rate is a simple measure of how many articles are published with respect to how many are submitted to a given journal. Many believe that journals with a high rejection rate are the “better” journals, but this may be something of a circular argument. If a journal is considered prestigious, more people, even those with no business doing so, are likely to submit to that journal, and the...

You do not currently have access to this content.