Publication speed and advanced online publication: Are biomedical Indian journals slow?

Abstract

Objective:The aim of this study was to identify the publication speed (peer review time and publication time) of biomedical Indian journals and identify the journals having the facility of advance online publication (AOP).Materials and Methods:Biomedical Indian journals were identified from the Journal Citation Report of 2013. Thirty original articles published between January 2012 and June 2014 were systematically selected from each journal. Information about the date of submission, revision, and acceptance were extracted from the full text of the articles. Median peer review time (submission to acceptance) and publication time (acceptance to AOP/electronic publication) were calculated for each journal.Results:Of the 19 journals studied, 5 (26.3%), 15 (78.9%), and 6 (31.6%) journals did not mention details about date of submission, date of revision, and date of acceptance, respectively. The individual median peer review time of the journals ranged from 87 to 377.5 days and the combined median peer review time (interquartile range) was 143.5 days (105.5, 238). The individual median publication time ranged from 14 to 349 days. The publication time for journals with AOP was significantly lesser (29.5 [19.6, 50.6] vs. 146.5 [126.5, 202.5]; P = 0.02) compared to journals without AOP. Impact factor of the journal did not correlate with the publication speed. The facility of AOP was provided by 6 (31.6%) journals.Conclusions:Overall, the peer review time and publication time of biomedical Indian journals included in our study seems to be fairly long. Less than one-third of biomedical Indian journals provide the facility of AOP.

Factors associated with publication speed in general medical journals: a retrospective study of bibliometric data

“…Thanks to the spread of internet in the last decades, researchers were given the opportunity to submit their research online, and it has been shown that online submission of manuscripts was more efficient than paper submission in terms of acceptance time (Govender et al 2008). We found that online publication was more efficient in terms of publication General Adjusted difference in median time between impact factor > 2.2 and < 1.6: − 85.7 days; between impact factor > 2.2 and 1.6-2.2: − 101.3 days § Not selected in the multivariate model and total delay times, confirming studies in ophthalmology, nursing and biomedical Indian journals (Chen et al 2013;Palese et al 2013;Shah et al 2016). The fact that online publication was not linked to acceptance time in our study is a logical finding, since online publication should only affect the publication and not the peer review process.…”

“…We found a weak association with impact factor, journals with higher impact factor being more likely to have shorter total delay times. There is conflicting evidence in the literature on this topic: Kalcioglu et al (2015) showed quite the opposite, since otorhinolaryngology journals with higher impact factor were more likely to have longer acceptance and publication times, whereas two other studies targeting ophthalmology and biomedical Indian journals found no association (Chen et al 2013;Shah et al 2016). Our finding might be explained by the fact that high-impact journals in general have more resources; these resources may be partly used to identify the problems encountered in the peer-review process and to develop strategies to improve the publication speed.…”

“…A number of bibliometric studies from a wide range of disciplines including biomedicine tried to quantify acceptance and/or publication times (Govender et al 2008;Kalcioglu et al 2015;Chen et al 2013;Amat 2008;Palese et al 2013;Björk and Solomon 2013;Dong et al 2006;Hopewell et al 2007;Manzoli et al 2014;Shah et al 2016;Stamm et al 2007;Jefferson et al 2016;Garg 2016), and to analyze the link with some journal characteristics [discipline (Björk and Solomon 2013;Dong et al 2006;Shah et al 2016;Garg 2016), journal impact factor (Kalcioglu et al 2015;Chen et al 2013;Shah et al 2016), open access publishing (Björk and Solomon 2013;Dong et al 2006), journal size (Björk and Solomon 2013)], paper characteristics [study design (Kalcioglu et al 2015;Palese et al 2013;Stamm et al 2007), online submission (Govender et al 2008), online posting before effective online or print publication (Amat 2008), advance online publication (Chen et al 2013;Palese et al 2013;Shah et al 2016), statistical significance of the results in clinical trials (Hopewell et al 2007;Jefferson et al 2016)] or trend over time (Kalcioglu et al 2015;Shah et al 2016).…”

“…To our knowledge, there are no detailed data available for general biomedical journals, though some of them were included in studies where publication speed was compared across disciplines (Björk and Solomon 2013;Dong et al 2006;Shah et al 2016) or according to the statistical significance of the results in clinical trials (Manzoli et al 2014;Jefferson et al 2016). Using data from studies conducted in other disciplines is not recommended, because publication speed has been shown to vary considerably across scientific fields (Björk and Solomon 2013;Dong et al 2006;Shah et al 2016;Garg 2016); for example, in Björk and Solomon's study submission-to-publication times were approximately twice as long in business and economy as in chemistry (Björk and Solomon 2013), whereas in Garg's study they were twice as long in earth sciences as in chemistry (Garg 2016). In addition, to our knowledge, no study so far has conducted in-deep research on the association between a number of author, paper and journal characteristics and publication speed.…”

How many manuscripts should I peer review per year?

“…Many studies evaluated the publication process times in different biomedical areas and geographic regions, reporting acceptance lag (i.e., time from submission date to acceptance date) of usually over 100 days. [8][9][10][11][12][13][14] Pharmacy Practice reported a first response time after peer review comments of 92 days (SE=5.7) in 2018. 15 We are happy to announce that Pharmacy Practice first response time for original research articles accepted decreased to 80 days (SE=3.8) in 2019, with an acceptance lag of 124 days (SE=5.0).…”