Publication lag in biomedical journals : so not hot right now

November 17, 2008 at 3:06 pm | Posted in article | Leave a comment
Tags: open access

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

dx doi 10.1007/s11192-006-0148-3

How long does it take to publish a journal article?

Dong et al. adopt a simple approach to estimate whether traditional publication, open access or learned-society edited articles differ in time between article acceptance and publication online/in print.

Though their method is marred by small sample sizes in the open access group, time from receipt to publication online compared well between traditional-publication and OA articles. Nature Publishing Group titles were selected as representative of the traditional model. However, I would have liked to have seen data for other titles – Nature publishes every week and is the biggest academic journal in the world.

It may not be entirely typical in its editing processes and timeliness.

Nature titles took on average 120 days from receipt to online publication. Open access titles from BioMed Central took on average 139 days.

The article is of interest to me since the titles are all biomedical journals. There has been previous work on how much new information is transferred to the scientific community post-publication; some authors argue that pre-publication communication channels such as conferences and personal communiques negate the importance of the finalised article as an organ for transferring new information.

One might assume that the advent of the Internet would speed up publication. Peer-review and copy editing for HTML or PDF releases mean that this is not necessarily true. In a way, the lag between receipt and publication is ‘programmed’ into the normal scientific research process for biomedical scientists. One submits papers and, in the interim, continues researching new topics.

Which phase in the research process is information *transfer* most important? When scientists are validating results and reporting informally to peers or at conferences? Is it earlier than this, when scientists are formulating ideas and testing hypothesess in early empirical tests?

The journal article is a mature, formalised information packet and, as this article shows, even when it enters a near-finalised state may still not reach public view for another three months.

Data like this makes one wonder how innovative e-science or text mining initiatives can really be if the content they derive facts from inevitably lags behind the true research front found at the lab bench.