From Virginia Trimble and Jose Ceja, From Virginia Trimble and Jose Ceja, University of California
Last year, Peter Aldhous reported concerns that the time between submission and acceptance of scientific papers on research into induced pluripotent stem cells differed depending on where the authors were from, with those from the US being accepted quicker than those from elsewhere (12 June 2010, p 12).
In his sample of 148 papers in journals with an impact factor of 5 or above – showing that the journal’s articles are cited regularly – Aldhous found that the median lag between receipt and acceptance was 72 days for papers with US-based authors and 96 days for non-US authors. This is a highly competitive field where a Nobel prize is arguably at stake and teams are racing to publish findings.
We are happy to report that such a discrepancy was not seen in the largest international journal in our field, The Astrophysical Journal, which has a current impact factor of 7.4. For 2190 papers published between July 2007 and June 2008, the median time between receipt and acceptance was 95 days for US papers and 98 for non-US, which is unlikely to affect who gets a Nobel prize.
We are in the process of finding out whether a paper’s acceptance time is correlated with its citation rate over the next three years.
Advertisement
Irvine, California, US
