Publication Times in Ophthalmology Journals: The Story of Accepted Manuscripts

Introduction: The process of scientific publishing changed greatly in the past decades. The authors aimed to get insight into the time required for articles to be accepted and released online in high-impacted ophthalmology journals. Methods: Comprehensive review of all original articles published by eight ophthalmology journals during a one-year period was performed for 2020 and 2005. Time taken from submission to acceptance and the first online release of the article was abstracted and analyzed. Results: A total of 3110 articles were reviewed. In 2020, the overall median time from submission to acceptance (AT) was 119 days (IQR 83-168) and 30 days (10-71) from acceptance to the first online release of the article (OP). AT increased by 7.3% from 2005 to 2020, whereas OP reduced by 73%. Publications, which the corresponding author was affiliated with US-located institution had shorter both AT and OP in 2005 and 2020. The author’s specialty in ophthalmology had an inconclusive impact on AT and OP. Papers with multiple affiliated institutions had shorter AT and OP in both 2005 and 2020; however, these differences were not statistically significant. Conclusion: This study demonstrated that increasing pressure on authors, editors, and reviewers to publish articles and journals with high impact factor (IF) significantly influenced publication times in ophthalmology journals. Inflation of research papers was associated with rising AT time. A significant decrease in OP time was potentially explained by the editor’s demand to achieve decent journal IF. This article brings to light relative publication times in the ophthalmology scientific journals.