Manuscript processing times are negatively correlated with journal impact factors

Lievers, W. Brent

Affiliations

¹Bharti School of Engineering, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario

Abstract and keywords (English)

A limited two-year time window is used to calculate a journal’s impact fac- tor, which suggests that journals with faster publication times will have higher impact factors. To confirm this hypothesis, the manuscript processing times (median time to acceptance and median time to publication) were determined for articles from 42 journals selected from seven different research areas. Both accep- tance time and publication time were found to be negatively correlated with impact factor. When analysed by research category, processing times were even more strongly negatively correlated with the group’s median impact factor.

Keywords: impact factor; manuscript handling; acceptance time; publication time

Abstract and keywords (French)

Le calcul du facteur d’impact se fait à partir d’une intervalle limitée de deux ans, ce qui donne à penser que les revues scientifiques dont les délais de publication sont plus courtes seront aussi celles qui jouiront des facteurs d’impact les plus élevés. Pour confirmer cette hypothèse, nous avons déterminé les délais de traitement des manuscrits (délai moyen d’acceptation et délai moyen de publication) pour les articles de 42 revues sélectionnées parmi sept domaines de recherche différents. Nous avons constaté une corrélation négative entre les deux délais d’acceptation et de publication et le facteur d’impact. Lors de l’analyse par domaine de recherche, nous avons constaté une corrélation encore plus fortement négative entre les délais de traitement et le facteur d’impact du groupe moyen.

Keywords: facteur d’impact, traitement des manuscrits, délai d’acceptation, délai de publication

Links

DOI: 10.1353/ils.2013.0022

URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ils/summary/v037/37.4.lievers.html

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