Skip to main content

Characteristics of Publication Delays Over the Period 2000–2016

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Evaluative Informetrics: The Art of Metrics-Based Research Assessment

Abstract

With the emergence of electronic publishing, the open access model, and the use of social media, the study of the publishing process in scholarly peer-reviewed journals has acquired importance as a research topic. However, these studies are based on relatively small samples of publications. In this study, the publications between 2000 and 2016 in Elsevier journals are used to analyze the characteristics of the publication process at the level of disciplines, journals, and publishing model. Over the period, the work on the technical aspects of the publication process was substantially expedited. Although it was reduced for disciplines with the longest editorial delays, the peer review of publications remains the most time-consuming element and 100 days seems to be, on an average, the minimum for this element of the publication process.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.leidenranking.com.

  2. 2.

    https://www.leidenranking.com/information/fields.

  3. 3.

    https://doaj.org.

References

  • Abt, H. A. (1992). Publication practices in various sciences. Scientometrics, 24(3), 441–447.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Alves-Silva, E., Porto, A. C. F., Firmino, C., Silva, H. V., Becker, I., Resende, L., et al. (2016). Are the impact factor and other variables related to publishing time in ecology journals? Scientometrics, 108(3), 1445–1453.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Amat, C. B. (2008). Editorial and publication delay of papers Submitted to 14 selected food research journals. Influence of online posting. Scientometrics, 74(3), 379–389.

    Google Scholar 

  • Azar, O. H. (2004). Rejections and the importance of first response times. International Journal of Social Economics, 31(3), 259–274.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bjork, B. C., & Solomon, D. (2013). The publishing delay in scholarly peer-reviewed journals. Journal of Informetrics, 7(4), 914–923.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boyack, K. W., van Eck, N. J., Colavizza, G., & Waltman, L. (2018). Characterizing in-text citations in scientific articles: A large-scale analysis. Journal of Informetrics, 12(1), 59–73.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen, H., Chen, C. H., & Jhanji, V. (2013). Publication times, impact factors, and advance online publication in ophthalmology journals. Ophthalmology, 120(8), 1697–1701.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dong, P., Loh, M., & Mondry, A. (2006). Publication lag in biomedical journals varies due to the periodical’s publishing model. Scientometrics, 69(2), 271–286.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Echeverria, M., Stuart, D., & Cordon-Garcia, J. A. (2017). The influence of online posting dates on the bibliometric indicators of scientific articles. Revista Espaňola de Documentación Cientifica, 40(3), e183.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Egghe, L., & Rousseau, R. (2000). The influence of publication delays on the observed aging distribution of scientific literature. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(2), 158–165.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fiala, D., Havrilova, C., Dostal, M., & Paralic, J. (2016). Editorial board membership, time to accept, and the effect on the citation counts of journal articles. Publications, 4(3), 21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Garg, K. C. (2016). Publication delays in periodicals published by CSIR-NISCAIR. Current Science, 111(12), 1924–1928.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gonzalez-Betancor, S. M., & Dorta-Gonzalez, P. (2019). Publication modalities ‘article in press’ and ‘open access’ in relation to journal average citation. Scientometrics, 120(3), 1209–1223.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haustein, S., Bowman, T. D. & Costas, R. (2015). When is an article actually published? An analysis of online availability, publication, and indexation dates. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.00796.

  • Heneberg, P. (2013). Effects of the print publication lag in dual format journals on scientometric indicators. PLoS ONE, 8(4), e59877.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hicks, D. M. (2004). The four literatures of social science. In Handbook of quantitative science and technology research (pp. 473–496). Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaufman, P. (1998). Structure and crisis: Markets and market segmentation in scholarly publishing. In B. L. Hawkins & P. Battin (Eds.), The mirage of continuity: Reconfiguring academic information resources for the 21st century (pp. 178–192). Washington DC: CLIR and AAU.

    Google Scholar 

  • Larivière, V., Haustein, S., & Mongeon, P. (2015). The oligopoly of academic publishers in the digital era. PLoS ONE, 10(6), e0127502.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lin, Z. Q., Hou, S. C., & Wu, J. S. (2016). The correlation between editorial delay and the ratio of highly cited papers in nature, science and physical review letters. Scientometrics, 107(3), 1457–1464.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lotriet, C. J. (2012). Reviewing the review process: Identifying sources of delay. Australian Medical Journal, 5(1), 26–29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lozano, G. A., Larivière, V., & Gingras, Y. (2012). The weakening relationship between the impact factor and the papers’ citations in the digital age. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(11), 2140–2145.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Luwel, M., & Moed, H. F. (1998). Publication delays in the science field and their relationship to the ageing of scientific literature. Scientometrics, 41(1–2), 29–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Merton, R. K. (1957). Priorities in scientific discovery: A chapter in the sociology of science. American Sociological Review, 22(6), 635–659.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moed, H. F. (2007). The effect of “open access” on citation impact: An analysis of the ArXiv’s condensed matter section. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(13), 2047–2054.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Montgomery, S. L. (2013). Does science need a global language? English and the future of research. University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Piwowar, H., Priem, J., Larivière, V., Alperin, J. P., Matthias, L., Norlander, B., et al. (2018). The state of OA: A large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of open access articles. PeerJ, 6, e4375.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shen, S., Rousseau, R., Wang, D. B., Zhu, D. H., Liu, H. Y., & Liu, R. L. (2015). Editorial delay and its relation to subsequent citations: The journals nature, science and cell. Scientometrics, 105(3), 1867–1873.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shi, D., Rousseau, R., Yang, L., & Li, J. (2006). A journal’s impact factor is influenced by changes in the publication delays of the citing journals. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 68(3), 780–789.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suber, P. (2012). Open access. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Essential Knowledge series.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Tort, A. B. L., Targino, Z. H., & Amaral, O. B. (2012). Rising publication delays inflate journal impact factors. PLoS ONE, 7(12), e53374.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tosi, H. (2009). It’s about time!!!! What to do about long delays in the review process. Journal of Management Inquiry, 18(2), 175–178.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Leeuwen, T. N., van Wijk, E., & Wouters, P. F. (2016). Bibliometric analysis of output and impact based on CRIS data: A case study on the registered output of a Dutch university. Scientometrics, 106(1), 1–16.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Leeuwen, T. N., Moed, H. F., Tijssen, R. J. W., Visser, M. S., & van Raan, A. F. J. (2001). Language biases in the coverage of the science citation index and its consequences for international comparisons of national research performance. Scientometrics, 51(1), 335–346.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van Orsdel, L., & Born, K. (2002). Doing the digital flip. Library Journal, 127(7), 51–56.

    Google Scholar 

  • van Raan, A. F. J., van Leeuwen, T. N., & Visser, M. S. (2011). Non-English papers decrease rankings. Nature, 469(1), 34.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Waltman, L., & van Eck, N. J. (2012). A new methodology for construction of a publication-level classification system of science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(12), 2378–2392.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ware, M. & Mabe, M. (2015). The STM report. An overview of scientific and scholarly publishing. The Hague, Netherlands: International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers. Retrieved from https://www.stm-assoc.org/2015_02_20_STM_Report_2015.pdf.

  • Wilcken, D. (1961). Delay in publication. Lancet, 1(7180), 1286.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yegros, A. Y., & Amat, C. B. (2009). Editorial delay of food research papers is influenced by authors’ experience but not by country of origin of the manuscripts. Scientometrics, 81(2), 367–380.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yu, G., Guo, R., & Li, Y. J. (2006). The influence of publication delays on three ISI indicators. Scientometrics, 69(3), 511–527.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marc Luwel .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Luwel, M., van Eck, N.J., van Leeuwen, T. (2020). Characteristics of Publication Delays Over the Period 2000–2016. In: Daraio, C., Glänzel, W. (eds) Evaluative Informetrics: The Art of Metrics-Based Research Assessment . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47665-6_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47665-6_4

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-47664-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-47665-6

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics