Publication Delay in Iranian Scholarly Journals

Transcription

1 From the SelectedWorks of Mahmood Khosrowjerdi 2011 Publication Delay in Iranian Scholarly Journals Mahmood Khosrowjerdi Neda Zeraatkar Narjes Vara Available at:

2 Publication Delay in Iranian Scholarly Journals Mahmood Khosrowjerdi 1 Research fellow in Iranian Research Institute for Information Science and Technology (IRANDOC), Tehran, Iran. mkhosro@gmail.com Neda Zeraatkar Resources Development and Evaluation Research Group Regional Information Center for Science and Technology (RiCest) Shiraz, Iran. neda.zeraatkar852@gmail.com Narjes Vara Information Management Research Group Regional Information Center for Science and Technology (RiCest) Shiraz, Iran. narsisvara@gmail.com Abstract Scholarly periodicals are considered as one of the main information resources that play a key role in the development of knowledge in a scholarly area. About 566 periodicals have the publication license from Commission of Scholarly Periodicals Evaluation of Ministry of Science, Research & Technology (MSRT) and of these, 68 are published in English. This paper aims to study the publication delay of these scholarly periodicals. For this purpose, the publication information concerned 26 periodicals was extracted through their official website and in sum, 835 published articles which were published in these periodicals in 2009 were studied. The results showed that peer review process and scholarly publication process in Iranian journals is long-standing and they should be improved. The results showed that the average of least-lasting peer review period has been 67 days and the average of most-lasting peer review period has been 518 days. In addition, the mean interval between article reception and acceptance notification is 1 Corresponding Author This artilce has been published in: Serials Review, Volume 37, Number 4, 2011 Page 1

3 192 days and the average between acceptance notification and final publication of the articles is 335 days. Also, there were no significant relationship between publication delay in Persian scholarly periodicals and their impact factor presented by Islamic World Science Citation Index (titled ISC). Finally, some solutions for improving the publication system of Iranian scholarly journals and decreasing the publication interval of these journals are offered. Keywords: Publication Delay; Iran; Persian Journals; Impact Factor; Islamic World Science Citation Index; ISC. Introduction Scholarly periodicals are the main tools for exchanging and sharing the scholarly findings in an academic society (Ali Doosti & et al., 2009). These journals have been published worldwide for more than 300 years. It is stated that specialized periodicals were emerged in 17 th and 18 th centuries in the world for the first time when the way was paved for emerging the scholarly periodicals (Riyahi, 1995). The first scholarly journal of the world called Philosophical Transactions was published by Royal Society of London in England in 1665 (Gelini Moghadam, 2006). The first scholarly periodical in Iran was published monthly in 1864 in three languages Persian, Arabic and French. This periodical called Scholarly Newspaper of Iran Government, contained some scholarly articles for the public (Hosseini Pakdeli, 1995). But the real transformation in scholarly periodicals of Iran happened since 1965, so that for next twenty years, 250 scholarly periodicals begun to be published with the average aging of six years (Zare, 1999). Following the latest published report by Commission of Scholarly Periodicals Evaluation, 566 research/promotional 2 periodicals and in the humanities field is published in Iran, of whom 68 are in English (MSRT, 2010). Manuscript submission system, peer review process and publication the scholarly periodicals in Iran have been confronted some challenges and this is the case with the international periodicals. Most of the writers, particularly the young writers are confused concerning the 2 The Iranian scholarly journals are divided into two types: Research Journal and Promotional Journal, which the first has the research-oriented goals and the second consider the science as whole. This artilce has been published in: Serials Review, Volume 37, Number 4, 2011 Page 2

4 choice of the periodical where they have their articles published. Some believe that author charges, impact factor of the periodical, periodical indexing in international indexing services, periodical rank in a specified area, the number of periodical subscribers, paper circulation, possibility of downloading the periodical, publication delay and acceptance or rejection rate are the most important factors for authors in choosing a suitable journal in order to send the scholarly manuscripts (Bjork & Holmstrom, 2006). It is worthwhile to say that most of the writers focus on the impact factor of periodical when sending their manuscript to the scholarly periodicals and do not consider the publication delay of that periodical. Although the publication delay is one of the main factors in choosing a periodical by the writers, awareness of quantity and quality of it, is not so easy (Bjork & Holmstrom, 2006). Publication Delay Publication delay refers to the delay between the submission of a scholarly manuscript to the journal editor-in-chief and its final publication (Luwel & Moed, 1998; Egghe, 2000). There are various reasons for delay, including the problems concerned the peer review procedure or the time period when the article is waiting for publication. Moreover, the number of submitted articles to the current journals is high and there are few reviewers to judge them and this makes the process longer (Harnad, 1996). Publication delay affects the article aging and consequently the impact factor of the journal (Egghe, 2000; Yu & Yu, 2008; Yu, Guo & Yu, 2006). Some scholars believe there is an inverse relationship between publication delay and impact factor (Yu, Guo and Yu, 2006), it means that the more the publication delay is in a journal, the less the impact factor of that journal will be. Furthermore, the negative effects of publication delay are discussed in various scholarly areas. The publication delay is observed more in the research areas that change quickly (Moret, 1997). This kind of delay in the journals of mathematics, science and technology is more (Luwel & Moed, 1998). In dentistry area, publication delay of articles from article submission to article reception notification is 85%, from article reception to acceptance notification, is 57.4%, and from acceptance notification to final publication of article is 19.4%, which generally, mean publication delay of articles is 35% (Sheibani Niya & et al, 1385). Some studies mention the This artilce has been published in: Serials Review, Volume 37, Number 4, 2011 Page 3

5 mean publication delay as days and state that it depends strongly on the peer review procedure. Likewise, online article submission decreases the interval between the acceptance notifications to the final publication from 85.75% to 29% (Amat, 2008). The costs of peer review have been reflected in some studies. In one of the authentic journals, New England Journal of Medicine, the manuscript submission process to the acceptance notification lasts about three to four months and has a wide variance. Also, the least time of peer review process in this journal is 2.5 to 3 weeks and the most is about one year. Generally, about 15 scholarly manuscripts are weekly discussed (about 30% of the whole sent articles to this journal), of whom six or seven articles are kept for more study and the rest are rejected (Relman, 1990). Generally speaking, about 10% of the sent articles are annually published and the cost of their peer review is about $ If we consider about to hours for a voluntary peer review ($100 per hour), in sum, very high million dollars are spent for the peer review process of this journal (Relman, 1990). In other hand, it can be said that for each published article, very high $12000 are spent for peer review process. Various solutions have been suggested for decreasing the publication delay. Although in order to shorten the publication delay, some editors-in-chief and scholars consider the publication of the special issues (Trivedi, 1993; Torgerson et al., 2005), and some consider the online publication of the journals (Amat, 2008; Luwel, 1998), unfortunately, publication delay problem is unsolved yet (Yu & Yu, 2008). On the other hand, it is said that because of the publishing the nearly half of the articles with no re-improvement in the past, there was not so much delay. Therefore, pervasive collaboration of the people involved including writer(s), editor(s), referee(s), and publisher(s) may be affective for decreasing these kinds of delays (Hartmann n.d.). One of the recent and most interesting studies has come to this conclusion that the writers' manuscripts should be sent to two or more scholarly journals and each of these journals that show a fast feedback to the writers, should knock out other journals and this helps to decrease the peer review process and manuscript publication (Torgerson and et al, 2005). Of course, this is not a case of public agreement. Problem Statement and the Importance of Study This artilce has been published in: Serials Review, Volume 37, Number 4, 2011 Page 4

6 This study which considers the measurement of publication delay in Iranian scholarly periodicals is of importance for some reasons: 1) publication delay is one of the serious problems in the publication procedure of scholarly periodicals which should be considered as the first step in analysis of peer review process and publishing the scholarly periodicals. 2) concerning the bulk of the published articles on the peer review and its process and the problems of data gathering related to acceptance or rejection of the sent manuscripts of the writers to the scholarly journals (Bjork & Holmstrom, 2006) and qualified data gathering through this way, this study can influence the quality of the periodicals and choosing them by the potential writers. 3) No study has been conducted in Iran concerning the publication delay of humanities journals. While a high percent (54%) of the authentic journals in Iran consists of humanistic periodicals (308 of 566), this study, by identifying the peer review time and final publication of articles in these journals, can help considerably to the improvement of the journals in this area. Thus, this research tries to study publication delay process (from sending the writers' manuscripts to journal to the final publication of their works) in Iranian scholarly journals shown in figure 1. The publication delay process contains two intervals: from manuscript submission to acceptance notification and from acceptance notification to the final article publication, in addition, comparing the results of this study with statistics in the international periodicals can determine the position of Iranian journals compared the international periodicals. Manuscript Submission Acceptance Notification Article Publication Figure 1. Publication Delay Divisions in this Research Altogether, this study tries to answer the following questions: This artilce has been published in: Serials Review, Volume 37, Number 4, 2011 Page 5

7 1. What is the interval between author manuscript submission and article acceptance notification (peer review process)? 2. What is the interval between article acceptance notification by the journal and its final publication (publication process)? 3. To which journals, the shortest and longest periods of peer review process belong? 4. Is there any significant relationship between the impact factor of the Iranian journals and their publication delays? Methodology Method A quantitative method was applied for this study. Descriptive and inferential (Pearson) statistics were used. In order to measure the interval between manuscript submission to acceptance notification and the interval between acceptance notification and the final publication, information contained in studied journals which is downloadable on their websites was considered. Therefore, the interval between reception date, acceptance date, and publication date of articles of studied journals which were published in 2009 was calculated and then, the average interval was shown. Sampling 26 of 566 Persian periodicals which had license from MSRT and their information was downloadable form their websites were selected and their articles in 2009 were analyzed after downloading (853 articles, in sum). The impact factor of Persian journals presented at the website of Islamic World Science Citation Index website ( was used. Findings & Results The findings of this study are shown in table 1. In this table, the number of analyzed articles of each journal, mean peer review process (interval between article reception and acceptance notification, per day), the mean publication process (the number of days between article This artilce has been published in: Serials Review, Volume 37, Number 4, 2011 Page 6

8 reception to final publication of the journal), the shortest and the longest process of peer review for each journal are presented. Table 1. Publication Delay in Iranian Scholarly Journals # Journal Persian Title Journal English Title # Published Articles in 2009 Mean peer review process: the time between article reception and acceptance notification (# Days) Mean Publication Process (# days between article reception and final publication) Impact factor in Islamic World Science Citation Index (ISC) Shortest Peer Review (# days) Longest Peer Review (# days) Religious Thought اندیشھ دینی 1 New Religious Thought اندیشھ نوین دینی 2 بررسیھای حسابداری و 3 حسابرسی Accounting and Auditing Review چشم انداز مدیریت Management Perspective دانش و توسعھ Knowledge and Development فضای جغرافیایی Geographic Space جغرافیا و توسعھ Geography and Development مطالعات مدیریت ترافیک Traffic Management Studies مطالعات روانشناختی Psychological Studies المپیک Olympic علوم سیاسی Political Sciences علوم و فناوری اطلاعات Information Sciences and Technology Physical Science and Sport علوم حرکتی و ورزش پژوھش زبانھای خارجی Research in Foreign Languages پژوھش و برنامھ ریزی 15 در آموزش عالی Research and Planning in Higher Education This artilce has been published in: Serials Review, Volume 37, Number 4, 2011 Page 7

9 پژوھش زبان و ادبیات 16 فارسی Research in Persian Language and Literature پژوھشھای جغرافیای 17 انسانی Human Geography Research روانپزشکی و روانشناسی 18 بالینی ایران Iranian Psycho medicine and Clinical Psychology Clinical Psychology روانشناسی بالینی 19 سبک شناسی نظم و نثر 20 فارسی Persian Poetry Typography Insurance Industry صنعت بیمھ 21 Politics سیاست 22 Economic Research تحقیقات اقتصادی 23 تحقیقات اطلاع رسانی و 24 کتابخانھ ھای عمومی Information Science and Public Libraries Research زبان وادب پارسی Persian Language and Literature Women in Culture and Art زن در فرھنگ و ھنر 26 Sum of Published Articles in these journals in Average As it is shown in table 1, peer review time period has been changing from 3 days (in Ravanpezeshki va Ravnshenasi Balini Iran ) to 1193 days (in Olapic ). The shortest peer review process was related to the political sciences journal with the average of 66 days and the longest one was related to the psychological studies with the average of 520 days. The shortest publication time period was related to Clinical Psychological Journal with 86 days and the longest one was related to the Geography & Development Journal with 714 days. Also, the average of the shortest peer review time period in Iranian journals was 67 days and the average of the longest one in these journals was 518 days. So, concerning the average time period of the peer review that was 192 days and the average time period of publication that was 333 days in Iranian journals and comparing them with the pervious researches (Sheibani & et al., This artilce has been published in: Serials Review, Volume 37, Number 4, 2011 Page 8

10 1389; Valaei & et al., 1385; Amat, 2008; Relman, 1990) it can be seen that publication delay in Iranian journals is more than those of international periodicals. On the other hand, analysis of 31 articles of Information Sciences & Technology Journal (one of the authentic humanities journals in Iran, in information technology, which is indexing in Scopus) published in 2009 showed that the writers had their published articles for 75 days in average in order to improve them and prepare the revised version. This makes the peer review process and article publication longer. In order to discover if there is a significant relationship between the publication delay of Persian journals and their impact factor presented by Islamic World Science Citation Index, Pearson correlation test was used. The results showed that there was no significant relationship between the impact factor and publication delay of Iranian journals. But there is a strong correlation between peer review process and publishing the scholarly articles. These results are in conflict with those presented by some scholars (Egghe, 2000; Yu and Yu, 2008; Yu, Guo & Yu, 2006). This may be a result of limited number of Iranian scholarly journals in subject fields. Thus, since there are a few periodicals in some subject categories such as politics, psychology, art etc. in Iran, the authors are forced to send their manuscripts to that limited number of journals. Thus, they select the periodicals which have higher impact factor than the others, although the noted periodicals have more publication delays. Table 2. Pearson Correlation Test among Peer Review Process (REV_PRC), Publication Process (PUB_PROC), and Impact Factor (IF) of Journals REV_PRC PUB_PROC IF REV_PR C PUB_PRO C IF Pearson Correlation 1.654(**).063 Sig. (2-tailed) N Pearson Correlation.654(**) Sig. (2-tailed) N Pearson Correlation Sig. (2-tailed) N ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). This artilce has been published in: Serials Review, Volume 37, Number 4, 2011 Page 9

11 Conclusion and Suggestions Regarding the data in table 1, it can be found that peer review and publication process in Iranian scholarly journals is relatively long. One of the main factors in increasing this time is the traditional publication and traditional peer review of these periodicals. Also, the time which is spent for exchanging peer review results, and sending and receiving the improved copies of the writers, increases this interval. Furthermore, low budget of scholarly periodicals publishing and low cost of scholarly refereeing of articles and voluntary nature of this process affects the increases in publication delay of journals in Iran. As it was mentioned before, the average of publication delay in Iranian scholarly journals has gone beyond the averages and some actions should be taken to decrease the delay and to improve the peer review system. Some practices are proposed here for optimizing this system, including: 1. Online publication of journals. Many Iranian scholarly journals are published through traditional channels. Online publication of this kind of journals can accelerate their publication and peer review processes. 2. Designing the online peer review system / online refereeing. Peer review process is conducted traditionally in many Iranian scholarly journals. If this process is conducted online based on the journal content management systems (CMCs), communication with referees, editors and writers of the articles becomes wider and the speed of information transmission becomes more. 3. Designing a comprehensive system for online Persian periodicals. In this system, different referees of the country in different areas are asked to collaborate voluntarily with periodicals. This is possible using the database or a national list of the voluntary referees with their expertise. 4. Designing the preprint database of Persian articles (before sending the articles to the periodicals and involving in the long peer review process). This problem may be confronted some challenges because the copyright law of the digital resources in Iran is not completely implemented, but it helps to increase the reliability level in scholarly society in a long run. Some advantages can be considered for the articles entered these databases including This artilce has been published in: Serials Review, Volume 37, Number 4, 2011 Page 10

12 multiple refereeing by collaborators, appropriate journal suggestion and following their peer review process. 5. Offering a detailed and comprehensive English abstract for submitted articles. This allows the journal to use the international/english speaking reviewers. Publishing the articles in Persian in Iranian journals may result in losing a wide range of audiences in international level. Also, because of the language barriers (Persian language), the international referees cannot be used. So, if the people involved in the journal ask writers to send a detailed and comprehensive abstract with almost 500 English words with their manuscript to the periodical, the periodical can send these articles to the international referees to evaluate. Besides, the range of reviewers will be extended. 6. Increasing the number of Iranian English journals. This helps in using the international and English reviewers to collaborate with the journal. For the time being, a high percent of Iranian periodicals are published in Persian (about 500 of 566 humanistic periodicals). With the increase of the publishing Iranian English journals, the indexing of them in international indexing services will be easier. 7. Decreasing the article deadlines for improvement (by the author) and reviewing the revisions (by reviewer). Many international scholarly periodicals such as Library High Tech have decreased the improvement time by the writer to two weeks and this can affect the acceleration of peer review process. In addition, if the author doesn t send the improved copy to the journal in the due time, his/her article is put aside in peer review process and the author should send it as a new submission to the journal. This warning to the referees can be affective to the some extent. But because many peer review process of Persian scholarly periodicals are voluntary, some care should be taken. 8. Using the forthcoming issues for the articles waiting for publication. Using forthcoming issues (as it has been implemented by some publishers such as Emerald ( as EarlyCite TM ), the bulk of the articles waiting for publication can be decreased and the process of scholarly publication can be optimized. In addition, the earlier citation to the articles can be done. 9. Subject classification of the articles and publishing the special issues. As it was mentioned, using the journal special issues can decrease the bulk of the articles waiting for publication. Therefore it is better for the people involved in Iranian journal to publish the waiting for This artilce has been published in: Serials Review, Volume 37, Number 4, 2011 Page 11

13 publication articles in the form of special issue. Also, the increase of the number of the published articles in these special issues may be affective. Acknowledgement The authors thank Mrs. Maryam Pourgalavi for her kindness in proof-reading of manuscript. References Alidousti, S., Khosrowjerdi, M., Abdolmajid, A. (2009). Scientific Periodicals in Iran: a Systemic Approach. Serials Review, Volume 35, Issue 4, Pages &_sort=r&view=c&_acct=C &_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid= &md5=b a788524af7f12034dfc3b a43 (accessed ). Amat, Carlos B. (2008). Editorial and publication delay of papers submitted to 14 selected Food Research journals: Influence of online posting. Scientometrics, 74 (3): Björk, Bo-Christern; Holmström, Jonas (2006). Benchmarking scientific journals from the submitting author s viewpoint. Learned Publishing, 19: Egghe, Leo; Rousseau, Ronald.(2000). The influence of publication delays on the observed aging distribution of scientific literature. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 51( 2): Gelini-Moghaddam, G. (2006). Online scholarly articles publishing: A review of trade and non-trade publishers. Ketabdari va Ettela'resani, 9(4). (in Persian). Harnad, S. (1996). Implementing peer review on the Net: Scientific quality control in scholarly electronic journals. (accessed ). Hartmann, Dennis L. (n.d.). Are AMS Journals Too Slow to Be Useful? An open letter to AMS Members. (accessed ). Hoseini-Pakdehi, A. (1995). A look at the first Iranian scholarly periodicals. Rahyaft (Spring): (in Persian). Luwel, M; Moed, H. F.(1998). Publication Delays in the Sscience Fields and Their Relationship to the Ageing of Scientific Literature. Scientometrics, 41( 1-2): Moret, B.M.E. (1997). Bridging the gap between theory and practice. Journal of Electronic Publishing, 3(1). (accessed ). MSRT, Ministry of Science, Research and Technology. (2010). The List of Ranked Periodicals in Humanities in Tehran: MSRT. (accessed ). (in Persian). Relman, A. S. (1990). Peer Review in Scientific Journals What Good Is It? West J Med, 153: Riahi, E. (1995). Scholarly Journals: The channel for scientists' communication. Rahyaft (Spring): (in Persian). This artilce has been published in: Serials Review, Volume 37, Number 4, 2011 Page 12

14 Sheibani, A., Velaie, N., Ramazani, L., Mehrshadian, M., Haraji, A., Haeri, A., Khajavi-khan, A. (2010). The study of time period between research performance and article publication in scholarly journals of dentistry in Iran. Pajoohandeh, 15(2): (in Persian). Torgerson, D. J., Adamson, J., Cockayne, S., Dumville, J., Petherick, E. (2005), Submission to multiple journals: a method of reducing time to publication. British Medical Journal, 330 : Trivedi, P. K. (1993), An analysis of publication lags in Econometrics. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 8: Velaie, N., Kousarian, M., Nasiri, A., Moosavi, F. (2006). The quantitative and qualitative study of scholarly articles of Mazandran university of medical sciences. Name: Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences Journal, 16(52): (accessed ). (in Persian). Yu, G; Yu, D. (2008). Design and simulation on the publication delay control system. Scientometrics, 76(3 ): Yu, G; Guo, R; Yu, D. (2006). The influence of the publication delay on journal rankings according to the impact factor. Scientometrics 67( 2 ): Zare, B. (1999). The history of specialized-scholarly magazines of Iran. Resaneh, 10(2): (in Persian). This artilce has been published in: Serials Review, Volume 37, Number 4, 2011 Page 13