Trend Of Publication Delay In International Ophthalmologic Journals

Objective: The length of publication cycle plays a key role in the speed of knowledge dissemination and the evaluation of journals.This study aims to investigate the trends of publication delay of the papers published on international Ophthalmological journals in the past two decades,as well as the correlation between publication delay with publication year and impact factor.Methods: Web Scraper was used to obtain the publication history information of all articles published from 2000 to 2020 on the ophthalmological journals indexed in the2019 Journal Citation Reports.The time from submission to acceptance,from acceptance to publication,and from submission to publication was calculated if the information is available.The median and interquartile range(IQR)were calculated for each journal in each year.The types of articles that do not undergo peer-review were excluded such as letter and editorial.The data with negative value were also excluded.Pearson correlation between the median of publication lags with publication year and impact factors of the journals were analyzed.Results:A total of 83,958 articles from 48 international ophthalmology journals were included.Since 2000 to 2020,the time from submission to acceptance time decreased from 147 days(IQR: 105-228)to 119 days(IQR: 73-190),the time from submission to publication decreased from 279 days(IQR;224-367)to 164 days(IQR:107-245),and time from acceptance to publication decreased from 124 days(IQR:101-141)to 32 days(IQR: 13-78).The Pearson correlations between the median of publication lags with publication year were all strongly negative(r=-0.86,-0.92 and-0.95 respectively,all p<0.001).The impact factor and 5-year impact factor had low and negative correlation with the time from acceptance to publication and the time from submission to publication(r ranged from-0.29 to-0.37,P<0.05).Conclusion : Our research shows that the publication delay of journals in ophthalmology is generally shorter year by year,especially the time from acceptance to publication.The ophthalmic journals with higher 2-year or 5-year impact factor had faster publishing speed.