Abstract
Besides the spread of knowledge, publications are often related to promotions and academic progression, so timing is vital. Among students in universities, there is a belief that a journal’s high impact factor means fast publishing time in ecology journals, such as the time between submission to acceptance and subsequent online posting in journal’s Web sites. Here we tested this assumption, and we also examined if a journal’s charges, paper length and the number of papers published per year were related to publishing time, specifically the period between submission and online availability of the accepted manuscript. After a thorough survey in 29 ecology journals, we found that publishing time was negatively and significantly related to journal’s impact factor, and also negatively (but non-significantly) to the number of paper published per year per journal and positively (but also not significantly) to paper length. Publishing time depended also on journal identity, but there was a large variation from the time between manuscript submission to final acceptance and online posting among journals. Several factors with a high degree of unpredictability and randomness are involved in the publication process, and here we found that journals with high impact factor publish the papers faster compared to journals with low factors. Even with substantial publishing time, e.g., on average 167 days between submission to acceptance and 223 days for online posting, editorial delays in ecology journals are quicker than journals in other disciplines/sciences.
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Acknowledgments
Students received funds from Cnpq (National Counsel of Technological and Scientific Development), Capes (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel) and Fapemig (Foundation of Support Research of the State of Minas Gerais). We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments which increased the quality of the text. This study was developed during the course “Useful Methods in Ecology” for the Post Graduation Program in Ecology at the Federal University of Uberlandia, and we are very grateful for the facilities offered by the University.
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Alves-Silva, E., Porto, A.C.F., Firmino, C. et al. Are the impact factor and other variables related to publishing time in ecology journals?. Scientometrics 108, 1445–1453 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2040-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2040-0