Abstract
Purpose :
Bibliometrics is an understudied topic in ophthalmology. The purpose of this study is to provide comprehensive data on the duration from submission to various stages of the publication process and assess factors influencing time to publication.
Methods :
A list of ophthalmology journals was obtained from the 2019 Web of Science Journal Citation Report. For each journal, characteristics such as journal acceptance rate and impact factor were collected. All articles published in 2019 from included journals were extracted and an independent review was conducted to determine dates of article submission, acceptance, electronic and print publication.
Results :
In total, 56 journals and 8835 research articles were included. Of these articles, 3591 (40.6%) were open access and 4837 (54.7%) were multi-institutional. In 2019, most publications came from the United States of America (n=1973). For articles that reported relevant data, the median number of days from submission to acceptance was 128 (range across journals: 71-222), acceptance to electronic publication was 30 (range: 2-199) and acceptance to print publication was 146 (range: 27-448). Significant associations were found between the following predictors and a reduced mean number of days from submission to electronic publication: increased journal five-year impact factor (p=0.026), increased immediacy index (p=0.008), increased article influence score (p=0.032), more authors (p=0.028), publishing in a hybrid journal (i.e. both open-access and subscription articles) versus an open-access journal (p=0.021), and a reduced proportion of multi-institutional articles in a journal (p=0.030).
Conclusions :
There is a wide variation in the time to acceptance and publication in ophthalmology journals. Authors can expect a shorter time to publication when publishing in high-impact journals. Reducing the time from acceptance to electronic publication for journals is a reasonable first step to improve article exposure and citation volume.
This is a 2021 ARVO Annual Meeting abstract.