Fate of manuscripts rejected by a non-English-language general medical journal: a retrospective cohort study

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to determine whether, where and when manuscripts were published following rejection by the Journal of the Danish Medical Association, a general medical journal published in Danish. Similar previous studies have focused on specialty/subspecialty journals published in English. DESIGN: Manuscripts rejected during a 4-year period were searched for in PubMed and Embase in order to assess the percentage of manuscripts subsequently published in other journals. In addition, characteristics of both the published manuscripts and the journals in which they were evaluated. RESULTS: Of 198 rejected manuscripts, 21 (10.6%) were eventually published after a median of 685 days (range 209–1463). The majority of these were original research, published in English-language specialty/subspecialty journals. The median number of citations per article was 2–3 (IQR 0.5–9.5, depending on the database searched). CONCLUSIONS: 10.6% of the rejected manuscripts were eventually published in other journals, mainly English-language specialty journals. This proportion was considerably lower than that for other journals that have studied the fate of rejected manuscripts. Manuscript translation could be a barrier for resubmitting to English-language journals with larger readerships, thus hindering the dissemination of knowledge to the international community.