A Retrospective Cohort Study
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Open Access Research BMJ Open: first published as 10.1136/bmjopen-2011-000147 on 4 August 2011. Downloaded from Fate of manuscripts rejected by a non-English-language general medical journal: a retrospective cohort study Siri Vinther,2 Jacob Rosenberg1,2 To cite: Vinther S, ABSTRACT ARTICLE SUMMARY Rosenberg J. Fate of Objective: The objective of this study was to manuscripts rejected by a determine whether, where and when manuscripts were Article focus non-English-language published following rejection by the Journal of the general medical journal: - To determine whether, where and when manu- Danish Medical Association, a general medical journal a retrospective cohort study. scripts were published following rejection by BMJ Open 2011;1:e000147. published in Danish. Similar previous studies have a general medical journal published in a language doi:10.1136/ focused on specialty/subspecialty journals published in other than English bmjopen-2011-000147 English. Design: Manuscripts rejected during a 4-year period Key messages < Prepublication history for were searched for in PubMed and Embase in order to - 10.6% of the rejected manuscripts were eventu- this paper is available online. assess the percentage of manuscripts subsequently ally published in other journals, a proportion To view these files please published in other journals. In addition, characteristics considerably lower than that for other journals visit the journal online of both the published manuscripts and the journals in that have studied the fate of rejected manuscripts (http://bmjopen.bmj.com). which they were evaluated. - Manuscript translation could be a barrier for resubmitting to English-language journals with Received 26 April 2011 Results: Of 198 rejected manuscripts, 21 (10.6%) larger readerships. Scientific journals publishing Accepted 1 June 2011 were eventually published after a median of 685 days (range 209e1463). The majority of these were original in small languages should consider publishing This final article is available research, published in English-language specialty/ original research in a major language such as for use under the terms of subspecialty journals. The median number of citations English in order to facilitate the dissemination of the Creative Commons per article was 2e3 (IQR 0.5e9.5, depending on the scientific results Attribution Non-Commercial database searched). http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ 2.0 Licence; see Strengths and limitations of this study http://bmjopen.bmj.com Conclusions: 10.6% of the rejected manuscripts were - PubMed and Embase were used to search for eventually published in other journals, mainly rejected manuscript eventually published in other English-language specialty journals. This proportion (indexed) journals; previous studies have was considerably lower than that for other journals searched only PubMed for rejected manuscripts. that have studied the fate of rejected manuscripts. However, even when searching both databases, Manuscript translation could be a barrier for the number of search results (published manu- resubmitting to English-language journals with larger scripts) would most likely be an underestimate, readerships, thus hindering the dissemination of as some manuscripts could be published in non- on September 25, 2021 by guest. Protected copyright. knowledge to the international community. indexed journals. - This study deals with a general medical journal published in a small language; previous studies have focused on specialty/subspecialty journals published in English. OBJECTIVE Since 1839, the Journal of the Danish Medical Association (Ugeskrift for LægerdUfL) has The journal is published in Danish and thus 1Department of Surgical been published on a weekly basis. It is one of serves a relatively small readership. Yet, the Gastroenterology, Herlev the oldest general medical journals in the fate of manuscripts rejected by UfL is not Hospital, University of world, and the only Danish, peer-reviewed only of national interest. This study could Copenhagen, Herlev, reveal that science communicated in Denmark medical journal indexed in Medline. 2Ugeskrift for Læger (Journal The journal publishes editorials, original a (small) national language may not cross of the Danish Medical articles, systematic reviews, non-systematic borders. This could be of particular concern Association), Copenhagen, reviews and case reports with an average of 10 when no national alternative for manuscript Denmark articles per week. resubmission exists. Then, language alone Correspondence to The objective of this study was to deter- precludes the dissemination of knowledge Siri Vinther; mine whether, where and when manuscripts that could otherwise benefit national as well [email protected] were published following rejection by UfL. as international scientific communities. Vinther S, Rosenberg J. BMJ Open 2011;1:e000147. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2011-000147 1 A retrospective cohort study BMJ Open: first published as 10.1136/bmjopen-2011-000147 on 4 August 2011. Downloaded from METHODS rejection by UfL and finally number of citations in e The editorial office of UfL kindly gave access to all Scopus, Google Scholar and Web of Science.1 4 manuscripts rejected by the journal. All unsolicited For every publishing journal, the name, subject, manuscripts rejected during the years 2002e2005 were publication language and impact factor were recorded. included in the study, a total of 198. For each rejected Seventeen journals were rated for impact by the Institute manuscript, an enclosure provided information about for Scientific Information.5 date of submission, date of refusal, manuscript type, author(s) and commentaries by peer reviewers. In RESULTS addition, copies of editorial rejection letters were Table 1 shows the number of submitted manuscripts to obtainable. UfL, the number of rejected manuscripts, the propor- PubMed and Embase were used to search for rejected tion between rejected manuscripts and submissions, the manuscript eventually published in other (indexed) number of manuscripts published elsewhere and the journals. By default, only the first author’s surname and proportion between manuscripts published elsewhere initials were searched for. If the author had a very and manuscripts rejected by UfL. A total of 198 manu- common name, a combination of the first author’s scripts were rejected during the years 2002e2005; surname and the last author’s surname was tried. If only the average acceptance rate was 91.8%. Of the manu- one author was listed, a combination of the author’s scripts rejected by UfL, 21 were subsequently published surname and a subject keyword was tried. elsewhere. When searching PubMed and Embase for manuscripts, Based on the editorial rejections letters, two-thirds of the time interval was not restricted. In this way, potential the manuscripts eventually published were rejected by attempts at duplication could be detected (authors UfL because of methodological/scientific reasons. For having submitted their manuscript to another journal the rest, the reasons were lack of originality and/or (and getting published) in addition to submitting to clinical interest. UfL). A non-restricted time interval would also provide Table 2 lists the characteristics of the 19 journals that sufficient opportunity for a manuscript to be published eventually published the 21 manuscripts. All of the arti- elsewhere. cles were published in English. With regard to subject, When a search yielded a potential result in PubMed, the majority of the journals would be categorised as Embase or both, the abstract was read. If any doubt specialty/subspecialty journals. existed as to whether the publication corresponded to The median time from submission to UfL to publica- the manuscript once rejected by UfL, the article was tion elsewhere was 685 days (range 209e1463). Six downloaded and read thoroughly. If doubt persisted, the manuscripts were published within 1 year of the original corresponding author was contacted and asked whether submission to UfL, six manuscripts were published http://bmjopen.bmj.com/ this specific manuscript rejected by UfL had been within 2 years, and nine manuscripts were published published elsewhere. more than 2 years after the submission to UfL. For each year (2002e2005), the number of submitted Figure 1A shows the relative distribution of submitted manuscripts, rejected manuscripts and manuscripts manuscripts (2440 in total). Figure 1B shows the relative subsequently published in (indexed) journals was distribution of the rejected manuscripts eventually counted. The proportion between rejected manuscripts published elsewhere (21 in total). and total number of submissions and also the propor- Table 3 lists data for the manuscripts of original tion between manuscripts published elsewhere and research. Overall, 26.8% of the manuscripts submitted to on September 25, 2021 by guest. Protected copyright. rejected manuscripts were then calculated. Finally, the UfL were manuscripts of original research. Of all the distribution of the manuscript types submitted to UfL manuscripts rejected by UfL, manuscripts of original and the distribution of the manuscript types published research constituted 36.9%. Of all published manu- elsewhere were analysed. scripts initially rejected by UfL, manuscripts of original For every published manuscript, the following was research constituted 38.1%. The proportion between recorded: manuscript type (original research, systematic published manuscripts of original research and manu- review, non-systematic