Cited by 59Academic Publishing and Open AccessPublishing and Scholarly CommunicationAcademic Writing and Publishing

Time from submission to publication varied widely for biomedical journals: a systematic review

Andersen, Mikkel Zola, Fonnes, Siv, Rosenberg, Jacob·2021·Current Medical Research and Opinion

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Fast dissemination of research is important for improving treatments and thus benefitting patients, caregivers, and researchers. However, getting scientific papers published may take a long time. The editorial handling time can be delayed by several processes both before and after acceptance of the paper. The aim of this study was to systematically review the editorial handling time of biomedical peer-reviewed literature (i.e. time from submission to publication). METHODS: The protocol for this systematic review was registered in PROSPERO (CRD42020196238). PubMed and EMBASE were searched systematically on 29 May 2020. We included publications on the timespan between submission and publication for accepted articles published in biomedical journals. RESULTS: Of the 4197 unique studies identified in the search, 69 were included in the systematic review. The mean timespan from submission to publication varied from 91 to 639 days, while the median timespan varied from 70 to 558 days. Submission to acceptance and acceptance to publication timespans showed similar disparity with means ranging from 50 to 276 and 11 to 362 days, respectively. Data were too statistically heterogeneous to perform meta-analyses. CONCLUSION: Editorial handling times of journals varied widely from a few months to almost two years, which delays the availability of new evidence. The editorial handling time did not differ between submission-to-acceptance-time and acceptance-to-publication-time. Examining differences in editorial processes between journals with long and short editorial handling times may help uncover, which processes are frequent causes of delay and thereby where to improve.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1080/03007995.2021.1905622

Cites

68 of 68 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Because LLMs became widely available in late 2022 and 2023, and journals take 100-200 days from submission to publication, LLM-assisted papers would start appearing in PubMed Central around mid-2024.

    “LLMs became broadly available in late 2022 and 2023; with submission-to-publication times of 100-200 days, 9 LLM-assisted papers would appear in PubMed Central from mid-2024 onward.”

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

1 of the 69 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Andersen, M. Z., Fonnes, S., & Rosenberg, J.
Affiliations
University of Copenhagen (DK)
Corresponding author
Andersen, Mikkel Zola
Venue
Current Medical Research and Opinion
Published
2021-04-06
Volume
37
Issue
6
Pages
985-993
ISSN
  • 0300-7995 (ISSN-L)
  • 1473-4877
OpenAlex
W3139283698
Cited by
59
References
69
Citations by year
2026: 18 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 2
FWCI
1.46
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • Current Medical Research and Opinion (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Research at the University of Copenhagen (University of Copenhagen) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Academic Publishing and Open Access
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Publishing and Scholarly Communication
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Academic Writing and Publishing
Keywords
peer review, biomedical journals, time to publication, scholarly publishing
MeSH terms
Humans, Periodicals as Topic, Time Factors

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review