Publication Model, Ownership and Impact of the Top Endocrinology Journals

Background: Subscription-based (SB) is the traditional publication model for peer-reviewed research; however, open-access (OA) models have been rising in popularity in recent years. Journals may be owned by commercial, professional society, university or government publishers. SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) indicator is a measure of the scientific influence of scholarly journals. Objectives: The purpose of this study is to assess the publication model, ownership and SJR indicator of the top Endocrinology journals. This will help inform researchers’ decisions when selecting a journal to submit their work to. Methods: The SCImagoJR website was used to obtain a database of active, peer-reviewed Endocrinology journals worldwide. Publishers were grouped by parent company and categorized as commercial, professional society, university or government. Journals were searched on the National Library of Medicine catalogue to determine whether they are indexed on MEDLINE. Data was analyzed using IBM Statistics version 25. Fischer’s exact test was performed to assess the distribution of publication model and indexing status. Kruskal-Wallis H test was used to assess the distribution of SJR. Results: 207 Endocrinology journals were included; 134 SB (64.73%) and 73 OA (35.27%). 122 journals are indexed in MEDLINE. The top three publishers of Endocrinology journals are Elsevier, Springer Nature and Wiley, all of which are commercial entities. They collectively own 91/207 (43.96%) Endocrinology journals and 70/122 (57.38%) MEDLINE-indexed journals. The top three publishers own more SB than OA journals, though this difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.080). There was no significant difference in the distribution of indexing status across the top three publishers (p = 0.250) and the four publisher types (p = 0.928). There were significantly more SB than OA journals indexed in MEDLINE (p<0.001). There was no significant difference in the distribution of SJR indicator across the top three publishers (p = 0.283) and publisher types (p = 0.873) (see Table 1). SB journals had significantly higher SJR indicators compared to OA journals (all journals, p = 0.002; indexed journals only, p = 0.013). CONCLUSIONS: Endocrinology journals are largely controlled by a few commercial entities and are primarily SB. Compared to OA, SB journals have significantly higher SJR indicators, meaning they are more influential. This is an important consideration for researchers when considering where to submit their work.