Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

If we assume that journals wish to maximize their citation count, then it is probably in their interest to consider an array of factors that determine a particular article’s propensity to be cited, including the article’s quality, topic, and author.  It’s also fair to assume that this information is common knowledge among the author and editor.  So, at equilibrium, an editor will accept a lower-quality paper from a highly cited author--so long as the weighted average of article quality, author reputation, and topic interest is high enough.  At the same time, the author would accept the bargain, since “overplacing” the paper in this manner would increase the article’s citation rate above what it should have been, given its quality and topic.  This may reduce the author’s overall citation rate, but it keeps his or her citation rate above what it should be given the quality of the work he has done in a particular case. 

In other words, if this kind of calculation is going on among editors, at equilibrium, a highly cited author can probably “overplace” a mediocre paper, while a less-cited author might need to “underplace” a quality paper. 

More generally, this doesn’t seem like a case for a large market failure with many unplaced articles, although there will be a fair amount of inefficiency in terms of systematic mismatches between article and journal quality driven by reputational effects.