The reviewers: a critical viewpoint

Cunha, Maura Da

doi:10.1590/s0102-33062012000300001

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The handling time of papers by editors, reviewers and authors may vary a lot for a number of reasons (Azar 2004;Biljecki 2015). For instance, editors in chief, more often than not, handle a great quantity of manuscripts, read them and decide which ones are forwarded to reviewers, and this process takes time (Cunha 2012); referees may suggest time-consuming additional tests and experiments to be included in the manuscript (Ploegh 2011); reviewers may postpone their revisions and delay the peer-review process; and authors themselves may take long periods to revise and re-submit manuscripts after the first and subsequent rounds of peer-review (Shen et al 2015). These factors input a large random variation in the process of publishing time, and unfortunately, they cannot be accurately examined.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are the impact factor and other variables related to publishing time in ecology journals?

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract