Time-Looping in Scholarly Publishing: An Investigation of the FT50 Journals

Abstract

Background. In scholarly publishing, time-looping is the practice of assigning papers that were online-published at a specific point in time to post-dated journal volumes/issues. Objectives. This study investigated to what extent time-looping was practiced by journals, and whether this practice was likely to have increased the journal citation metrics. The journals in Financial Times' list of top 50 business and economics journals (known as the FT50 list) were used as the sample.Methods. All FT50 journals' websites were visited on the same date (February 15, 2022) to identify journals that practiced time-looping. The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and CiteScore values of the journals over the last ten years (2011-2020) were analyzed. Results. As of mid-February 2022 when the analysis was conducted, the practice of time-looping was identified for four FT50 journals, published by the same publisher. The time-loops ranged from 48 to 111 days (with an average of 79 days). Examining the JIF and the CiteScore values for these four journals over the last ten years, it was observed that the 2020 JIF values for these four journals saw a significant increase. The results of further analysis suggest that time-looping is a likely cause of this increase in JIF values. The paper discusses the implications of the practice of time-looping for journals, publishers, and the scholarly community as a whole.