Time from submission to publication varied widely for biomedical journals: a systematic review

DNP-Authored Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals 2011-2021

BACKGROUND

With an increasing number of doctor of nursing practice (DNP) graduates, the volume of peer-reviewed journal publications among DNP-prepared nurses is rising.

PURPOSE

The primary aim of this study was to quantify, analyze, and categorize DNP-authored peer-reviewed journal publications.

METHODS

A descriptive research design was used to analyze DNP-authored peer-reviewed journal publications in the WorldCat, EBSCO Discovery Service, and PubMed databases from 2011 through 2021.

RESULTS

The 3839 journal publications included at least one DNP-prepared nurse author. There were 2495 (65%) publications with a DNP first author, 921 (24%) with a DNP solo author, and 2918 (76%) included publication collaboration. The majority of publications were practice- (40%), nursing- (17%), and education-focused (15%). Science translation in evidence-based practice and quality improvement publications accounted for 24%.

CONCLUSIONS

This study demonstrates the proliferation of DNP-authored peer-reviewed journal publications, which may indicate an increase in the number of nursing care quality initiatives occurring in the clinical setting.

Seventy Percent of Abstracts Presented at the AANA Annual Meeting Are Later Published

Purpose

To assess the future publication rates of abstracts presented at AANA annual meetings between 2015 and 2019.

Methods

Abstracts presented at the 2015-2019 AANA annual meetings were identified. The PubMed and Google Scholar databases were searched for a corresponding manuscript for each abstract using the name of the first author, abstract title, and keywords. A level of evidence and anatomic category were assigned to each abstract. For each corresponding manuscript identified, the authors, journal of publication, journal impact factor (IF), time to publication, and number of citations were recorded.

Results

Overall, 70.5% of abstracts presented at the 2015-2019 AANA annual meetings (275 of 390) went on to future publication, with 63.6% (248 of 390) achieving publication within 3 years. The median time to publication from presentation was 12.8 months. Arthroscopy (29.8%) was the most frequent journal of publication. The average IF of publishing journals was 4.92 ± 3.41, with 61.8% of manuscripts (170 of 275) published in journals with an IF of at least 4.00. Published manuscripts received an average of 36.30 ± 47.6 citations per manuscript. A stronger level of evidence was associated with an increased likelihood of future publication (P = .008).

Conclusions

Pre-publication literature presented at the AANA annual meetings has continued to be associated with a strong likelihood of future publication in Arthroscopy and Arthroscopy, Sports Medicine, and Rehabilitation, as well as other respected peer-reviewed journals.

Clinical Relevance

Exposure to pre-publication literature may have an impact on clinical management. It is important to understand the quality of research presented in abstracts from AANA annual meetings. Knowing how many abstracts are ultimately published in peer-reviewed journals provides an indicator of the quality and reliability of the research.

Prevalence of Short Peer Reviews in 3 Leading General Medical Journals

Importance

High-quality peer reviews are often thought to be essential to ensuring the integrity of the scientific publication process, but measuring peer review quality is challenging. Although imperfect, review word count could potentially serve as a simple, objective metric of review quality.

Objective

To determine the prevalence of very short peer reviews and how often they inform editorial decisions on research articles in 3 leading general medical journals.

Design, Setting, and Participants

This cross-sectional study compiled a data set of peer reviews from published, full-length original research articles from 3 general medical journals (The BMJ, PLOS Medicine, and BMC Medicine) between 2003 and 2022. Eligible articles were those with peer review data; all peer reviews used to make the first editorial decision (ie, accept vs revise and resubmit) were included.

Main Outcomes and Measures

Prevalence of very short reviews was the primary outcome, which was defined as a review of fewer than 200 words. In secondary analyses, thresholds of fewer than 100 words and fewer than 300 words were used. Results were disaggregated by journal and year. The proportion of articles for which the first editorial decision was made based on a set of peer reviews in which very short reviews constituted 100%, 50% or more, 33% or more, and 20% or more of the reviews was calculated.

Results

In this sample of 11 466 reviews (including 6086 in BMC Medicine, 3816 in The BMJ, and 1564 in PLOS Medicine) corresponding to 4038 published articles, the median (IQR) word count per review was 425 (253-575) words, and the mean (SD) word count was 520.0 (401.0) words. The overall prevalence of very short (<200 words) peer reviews was 1958 of 11 466 reviews (17.1%). Across the 3 journals, 843 of 4038 initial editorial decisions (20.9%) were based on review sets containing 50% or more very short reviews. The prevalence of very short reviews and share of editorial decisions based on review sets containing 50% or more very short reviews was highest for BMC Medicine (693 of 2585 editorial decisions [26.8%]) and lowest for The BMJ (76 of 1040 editorial decisions [7.3%]).

Conclusion and Relevance

In this study of 3 leading general medical journals, one-fifth of initial editorial decisions for published articles were likely based at least partially on reviews of such short length that they were unlikely to be of high quality. Future research could determine whether monitoring peer review length improves the quality of peer reviews and which interventions, such as incentives and norm-based interventions, may elicit more detailed reviews.

A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) Analysis of ChatGPT in the Medical Literature: Concise Review

BACKGROUND

ChatGPT is a 175-billion-parameter natural language processing model that is already involved in scientific content and publications. Its influence ranges from providing quick access to information on medical topics, assisting in generating medical and scientific articles and papers, performing medical data analyses, and even interpreting complex data sets.

OBJECTIVE

The future role of ChatGPT remains uncertain and a matter of debate already shortly after its release. This review aimed to analyze the role of ChatGPT in the medical literature during the first 3 months after its release.

METHODS

We performed a concise review of literature published in PubMed from December 1, 2022, to March 31, 2023. To find all publications related to ChatGPT or considering ChatGPT, the search term was kept simple ("ChatGPT" in AllFields). All publications available as full text in German or English were included. All accessible publications were evaluated according to specifications by the author team (eg, impact factor, publication modus, article type, publication speed, and type of ChatGPT integration or content). The conclusions of the articles were used for later SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis. All data were analyzed on a descriptive basis.

RESULTS

Of 178 studies in total, 160 met the inclusion criteria and were evaluated. The average impact factor was 4.423 (range 0-96.216), and the average publication speed was 16 (range 0-83) days. Among the articles, there were 77 editorials (48,1%), 43 essays (26.9%), 21 studies (13.1%), 6 reviews (3.8%), 6 case reports (3.8%), 6 news (3.8%), and 1 meta-analysis (0.6%). Of those, 54.4% (n=87) were published as open access, with 5% (n=8) provided on preprint servers. Over 400 quotes with information on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats were detected. By far, most (n=142, 34.8%) were related to weaknesses. ChatGPT excels in its ability to express ideas clearly and formulate general contexts comprehensibly. It performs so well that even experts in the field have difficulty identifying abstracts generated by ChatGPT. However, the time-limited scope and the need for corrections by experts were mentioned as weaknesses and threats of ChatGPT. Opportunities include assistance in formulating medical issues for nonnative English speakers, as well as the possibility of timely participation in the development of such artificial intelligence tools since it is in its early stages and can therefore still be influenced.

CONCLUSIONS

Artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT are already part of the medical publishing landscape. Despite their apparent opportunities, policies and guidelines must be implemented to ensure benefits in education, clinical practice, and research and protect against threats such as scientific misconduct, plagiarism, and inaccuracy.

Counterpoint: Preprints and the Future of Scientific Publishing-In Favor of Relevance

Peer-reviewed journals provide an invaluable but inadequate vehicle for scientific communication. Preprints are now an essential complement to peer-reviewed publications. Eschewing preprints will slow scientific progress and reduce the public health impact of epidemiologic research. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic highlighted long-standing limitations of the peer-review process. Preprint servers, such as bioRxiv and medRxiv, served as crucial venues to rapidly disseminate research and provide detailed backup to sound-bite science that is often communicated through the popular press or social media. The major criticisms of preprints arise from an unjustified optimism about peer review. Peer review provides highly imperfect sorting and curation of research and only modest improvements in research conduct or presentation for most individual papers. The advantages of peer review come at the expense of months to years of delay in sharing research methods or results. For time-sensitive evidence, these delays can lead to important missteps and ill-advised policies. Even with research that is not intrinsically urgent, preprints expedite debate, expand engagement, and accelerate progress. The risk that poor-quality papers will have undue influence because they are posted on a preprint server is low. If epidemiology aims to deliver evidence relevant for public health, we need to embrace strategic uses of preprint servers.

Time from submission to publication in urology journals: A look at publication times before and during Covid-19

Background

The Covid-19 pandemic impacted scientific publishing, though it's effect on publication times in urology literature is unknown. The objective of our study were to determine and compare acceptance and publication times in general and specific urology journals, and to quantify these times before and during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Methods

We identified all original articles published in seven urology journals in 2019 and 2021, and extracted data on submission, acceptance, online, and in-print publication times. Differences between groups were compared using Mann-Whitney U tests.

Results

A total of 2880 articles were included, comprising 1601 articles published in 2021 and 1279 in 2019. Less experimental/animal studies were published in 2021 compared to 2019 (197 vs. 289). Time between submission and online publication was longer in 2021 (median 4.4 vs 3.3 months, p < 0.001), though acceptance times were not different (median 3.3 vs 3.3 months, p = 0.25). Prostate (median: 2.8 months, Neurourology and Urodynamics (median: 2.8 months) and Word Journal of Urology (median 2.9 months) had the shortest acceptance time in 2021. Time between submission and in-print publication ranged from 4.6 months (IQR: 3.6-6.8) for Prostate to 11.9 months (IQR: 9.8-13.2) for World Journal of Urology. Acceptance times were significantly longer in 2021 compared to 2019 for Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Diseases, Journal of Sexual Medicine, and Prostate. Moreover, time between submission and in print publication was longer in 2021 compared to 2019 for Journal of Sexual Medicine and Urologic Oncology: Seminars and Original Investigations, and shorter for Neurourology and Urodynamics. The median time to in print publication was lower for publications from US institutions (median 7.0 vs. 7.7 months in 2019 and 8.7 months vs 9.1 months in 2021).

Conclusions

We identified journal specific acceptance and publication times and observed substantial differences between urology journals for the years 2019 and 2021.

A study of the correlation between publication delays and measurement indicators of journal articles in the social network environment-based on online data in PLOS

The development of network technique and open access has made numerous research results freely obtained online, thereby facilitating the growth of the emerging evaluation methods of Altmetrics. However, it is unknown whether the time interval from reception to publication has an impact on the evaluation indicators of articles in the social network environment. We construct a range of time-series indexes that represent the features of the evaluation indicators and then explore the correlation of acceptance delay, technical delay, and overall delay with the relevant indicators of citations, usage, sharing and discussions, and collections that are obtained from the open access journal platform PLOS. Moreover, this research also explores the differences in the correlations of the delays for the literature in six subject areas with the corresponding indicators and the discrepancies of the correlations of delays and indexes in various metric quartiles. The results of the Mann-Whitney U test reveal that the length of delays affects the performance of the literature on some indicators. This study indicates that reducing the acceptance time and final publication time of articles can improve the efficiency of knowledge diffusion through the formal academic citation channel, but in the context of social networking communication, an appropriate interval at a particular stage in the publishing process can enhance the heat of sharing, discussion, and collection of articles to a small extent, hence boosting the influence and attention received by the literature on the internet.

Does publication history influence the integrity of the journals: studying publication timelines and their impact on journal metrics?

Purpose

The purpose of the study is to evaluate the relationship of Journal Publication Timeline (submission to first decision and submission to final decision) with various Journal Metrics (citing half-life, article influence score, the immediacy index, the acceptance rate, the impact factor (IF), five years IF, Eigenfactor and cited half-life) of top 600 journals retrieved from Journal Citation Report (JCR) 2020 under the tag, Elsevier Unified.

Design/methodology/approach

Top 600 journals in the decreasing order of the IFs under the tag, “Elsevier Unified” were retrieved from JCR 2020 of Clarivate Analytics. Information about “Journal Metrics” was ascertained using “Customized Service” of JCR, while information about the “Publication Timeline” of each journal was obtained using Elsevier's “Journal Insights Service.” It was found that only 177 journals provided the complete information regarding the “Publication Timeline” and hence considered for the study. Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis was conducted to test the different hypotheses.

Findings

It was found that submission to first decision has a significant relationship with the immediacy index, citing half-life and the acceptance rate. Submission to final decision has a significant relationship with Journal Impact Factor (JIF), the immediacy index, Eigenfactor, citing half-life and the acceptance rate.

Research limitations/implications

The study will provide the authors with sound and valuable information to support their selection of journals. Inferences in light of fluctuations in the scholarly communication process in terms of Publication Timelines and Journal Metrics can be deeply understood with the aid of the current study's findings. What considerations authors have to take before submitting their papers is the main implication of the study. Journal administrators can also benefit from the findings of the current study as it can help recruit and manage reviewers, which will ensure a successful publication timeline.

Originality/value

The study correlates Publication Timeline Indicators with Journal Metrics Indicators using secondary cross-sectional data. Though most previous studies only examine the relationship of the Publication Timeline with the Journal Impact Factor (JIF), there is very scarce literature that deciphers the influence of Publication Timeline indicators on different Journal Metrics indicators (including JIF).

Peer review

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-02-2022-0108.

A guide to open science practices for animal research

Translational biomedical research relies on animal experiments and provides the underlying proof of practice for clinical trials, which places an increased duty of care on translational researchers to derive the maximum possible output from every experiment performed. The implementation of open science practices has the potential to initiate a change in research culture that could improve the transparency and quality of translational research in general, as well as increasing the audience and scientific reach of published research. However, open science has become a buzzword in the scientific community that can often miss mark when it comes to practical implementation. In this Essay, we provide a guide to open science practices that can be applied throughout the research process, from study design, through data collection and analysis, to publication and dissemination, to help scientists improve the transparency and quality of their work. As open science practices continue to evolve, we also provide an online toolbox of resources that we will update continually.

Open science has become a buzzword in the scientific community that too often misses the practical application for individual researchers. This Essay, provides a guide to choosing the most appropriate tools to make animal research more transparent.

Anesthesiology Articles Published in 2020: A Review and Characterization of COVID-19 Versus Non-COVID-19 Publications in Top Anesthesiology Journals

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a significant impact on the practice of medicine worldwide, particularly in anesthesiology. As the clinical realm has rapidly adjusted to the realities of the pandemic, anesthesiology literature has also changed significantly to reflect this. The purpose of this study was to characterize the effects the COVID-19 pandemic has had on anesthesiology literature. Specifically, it was hypothesized that the COVID-19-related literature in the anesthesiology community would gain more interest than non-COVID-19-related articles. A total of 15 anesthesiology-related journals with the highest impact factor in 2019, according to the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), were selected for data collection. An advanced PubMed search identified 5,722 COVID-19-related articles published by these journals in 2020. Next, articles with titles including “corona,” “COVID,” “COVID-19,” “pandemic,” “SARS,” or “SARS-CoV-2” were selected for inclusion in the study, which resulted in 676 (12%) articles. A Kruskal-Wallis test was used to assess the Altmetric score, which is a weighted calculation of the attention an article receives online, for COVID-19 versus non-COVID-19 articles. Articles were then further characterized across multiple different variables, including country of origin, month published, type of article, and subspecialty of anesthesiology it pertained to. Of the 15 journals investigated, 676 (12%) articles of the 5,722 total articles published were found to be COVID-19-related material. The majority of the articles were found to be published in April (18%), May (19.5%), and June (14%). The majority of these articles were related either to general anesthesia (operating room anesthesiology that is not tied to a particular subspecialty fellowship track) (48%) or critical care (39%). By article type, most were determined to be editorial (71%) in nature, followed by original research articles (21%), of which most were cross-sectional (55%) studies. When compared with non-COVID-19-related articles, COVID-19-related articles had a significantly greater Altmetric score (29.518 versus 8.6333, p < 0.001). Of the COVID-19-related articles, original articles had the greatest Altmetric score, when compared to editorials and guidelines (54.794 versus 20.777 versus 40.643, p < 0.002). The response of the academic anesthesiology community to the COVID-19 pandemic was strong and timely, with a particularly strong focus on critical care anesthesia. The impact of the pandemic was strongly felt by the anesthesiology community, and their timely response served to guide our country and world through an incredibly challenging time. The pandemic highlighted the value of anesthesiologists worldwide, not only in the operating room setting but particularly as critical care physicians.

Peer Review Metrics and their influence on the Journal Impact

The manuscript processing timeline, a necessary facet of the publishing process, varies from journal to journal, and its influence on the journal impact needs to be studied. The current research looks into the correlation between the ‘Peer Review Metrics’ (submission to first editorial decision; submission to first post-review decision and submission to accept) and the ‘Journal Impact Data’ (2-year Impact Factor; 5-year Impact Factor; Immediacy Index; Eigenfactor Score and Article Influence Score). The data related to ‘Peer Review Metrics’ (submission to first editorial decision; submission to first post-review decision and submission to accept) and ‘Journal Impact Data’ (2-year Impact Factor; 5-year Impact Factor; Immediacy Index; Eigenfactor Score and Article Influence Score) were downloaded from the ‘Nature Research’ journals website https://www.nature.com/nature-portfolio/about/journal-metrics . Accordingly, correlations were drawn between the ‘Peer Review Metrics’ and the ‘Journal Impact Data’. If the time from ‘submission to first editorial decision’ decreases, the ‘Journal Impact Data’ increases and vice versa. However, an increase or decrease in the time from ‘submission to first editorial decision’ does not affect the ‘Eigenfactor Score’ of the journal and vice versa. An increase or decrease in the time from ‘submission to first post-review decision’ does not affect any ‘Journal Impact Data’ and vice versa. If the time from ‘submission to acceptance’ increases, the ‘Journal Impact Data’ (2-year Impact Factor, 5-year Impact Factor, Immediacy Index and Article Influence Score) also increases, and if the time from ‘submission to acceptance’ decreases, so will the ‘Journal Impact Data’. However, an increase or decrease in the time from ‘submission to acceptance’ does not affect the ‘Eigenfactor Score’ of the journal and vice versa. The study will act as a ready reference tool for the scholars to select the most appropriate submitting platforms for their scholarly endeavours. Furthermore, the performance and evaluative indicators responsible for a journal’s overall research performance can also be understood from a micro-analytical view, which will help the researchers select appropriate journals for their future scholarly submissions. Lengthy publication timelines are a big problem for the researchers because they are not able to get the credit for their research on time. Since the study validates a relationship between the ‘Peer Review Metrics’ and ‘Journal Impact Data’, the findings will be of great help in making an appropriate journal’s choice. The study can be an eye opener for the journal administrators who vocalise a speed-up publication process by enhancing certain areas of publication timeline. The study is the first of its kind that correlates the ‘Peer Review Metrics’ of the journals and the ‘Journal Impact Data’. The study’s findings are limited to the data retrieved from the ‘Nature Research’ journals and cannot be generalised to the full score of journals. The study can be extended across other publishers to generalise the findings. Even the articles’ early access availability concerning ‘Peer Review Metrics’ of the journals and the ‘Journal Impact Data’ can be studied.