“You name it, we take it, and reject it.”

That line tells you almost everything you need to know about the Journal of Universal Rejection, better known as JofUR. In a world where people like to say that any paper can find a home somewhere if you just keep trying, JofUR stands out by offering the opposite guarantee: rejection, delivered with remarkable consistency.

Under the watchful standards of editor-in-chief Caleb Emmons, the journal has built its identity around what may well be the highest rejection rate in the universe. Publishing even a single item there—an article, a note, maybe even an advertisement—would count as a minor miracle in the history of scholarly submission. At least there are no page charges.

The journal’s academic scope is, in theory, wide open. The editor-in-chief works at the intersection of mathematics and poetry, while the associate editors cover an almost comically broad range of disciplines: politics, geography, history, biology, chemistry, social science, psychology, education, philosophy, drama, law, statistics, and plenty more besides. So whatever field you work in, you are welcome to submit. The outcome is wonderfully egalitarian: everyone gets rejected.

If you are feeling unusually confident in your work—so confident that you think it could breeze into Cell, Nature, or Science—JofUR has already prepared its response:

Frankly, we don’t care

Its review process is similar to ordinary journals only in the loosest possible sense. Most submissions are rejected immediately, often without the editor bothering to read them. On the rare occasion that a manuscript is actually looked at, the formal review process may begin, but this changes nothing. Reviewer comments, whether favorable or not, do not alter the final result: rejection, and usually fast. And if the decision somehow does not arrive right away, that is not a sign of hope. Your paper may simply be buried in the editor’s inbox. Please wait patiently for its eventual demise.

JofUR is also available by subscription, for those with both money and a taste for academic absurdity. A quarterly subscription costs $9,999.99 per year, with small bargaining apparently acceptable. Buyers may receive either the print edition or the electronic edition at random, largely because nobody has ever subscribed, so the delivery method remains untested. For the truly affluent, this is framed as a rare chance to ascend into intellectual prestige. One can almost picture the scene: sitting on a folding stool in a richly fertilized rural field, holding a glass of non-Champagne-region “champagne” as the evening light glints off it, while a gold-colored phone in your pocket erupts into a triumphant ringtone to announce that the latest issue of JofUR has arrived by email. Beyond that point, the imagination may reasonably give up.

Since its launch in the first quarter of 2009, the journal has maintained an extraordinary record: it has never published anyone’s anything. That kind of excellence did not come without setbacks. In the fourth quarter of 2009, it missed an issue because of a vacation break. A year later, the website went down and all data were lost. Even so, the first quarter of 2011 brought a notable achievement: 352 rejections. If nothing else, that number says a great deal about how strongly researchers are drawn to impossible venues.

The journal also keeps a blog that occasionally shares especially memorable rejection rationales. The variety is part of the charm, and the archive makes decent light reading for idle moments. Since the journal charges no publication fees, it has also opened a merchandise shop to help sustain operations. The catalog includes all manner of branded items, including baby clothes.

And for those who still find the acceptance rate too discouraging, there is, apparently, an even friendlier alternative somewhere out there: a journal with the highest acceptance rate in the galaxy that simply never publishes anything at all.