Identifying appropriate journals in which to publish original research on vaccines against human infectious diseases Correspondence to: Daniel Portsmouth Daniel Portsmouth, Baxter BioScience, Vaccine R&D, Baxter BioScience, Austria Austria daniel_portsmouth@ baxter.com Abstract The most effective way of communicating new be of considerable importance to the field. In prac- research findings is by publishing them in a peer- tice, however, the vast majority of manuscripts sub- reviewed journal which is widely read and highly mitted to the top-ranking journals are not accepted respected. To ensure that important new data are for publication. Rejection will mean, in most cases, shared with the appropriate audience in a timely a requirement to re-structure and re-format the manner, a number of important considerations manuscript before it can be submitted to an alterna- need to be taken into account when choosing a suit- tive journal. In the worst case, the manuscript will able journal. This article provides an analysis of jour- have undergone a lengthy review process; this nals which publish original articles describing studies delay may result in a loss of data novelty and the of vaccines against human infectious diseases. A context of the manuscript may need substantial revi- search of PubMed identified over 80 journals sion. Re-writing and updating the manuscript will which recently published vaccine-related studies. involve further lost time and this could result in These journals were filtered according to impact a considerably diminished impact when the article factor and number and percentage of vaccine- is eventually published. This scenario can be related studies published from 2006 to 2010, result- avoided by a more appropriate initial choice of ing in a core of 32 journals which frequently publish target journal. studies of vaccines against human infectious dis- The key processes involved in identifying suitable eases. A survey was then undertaken to gather target journals have been recently described as part additional information with respect to acceptance of a detailed ‘Authors’ submission toolkit’ pub- rate, average time needed from manuscript sub- lished by members of the pharmaceutical industry mission to acceptance and from acceptance to and biomedical journals.1 Important considerations publication. This dataset should provide a useful include matching the focus of your study with that source of metrics which can help ensure that manu- of the journal, assessing whether and how often scripts are submitted to the most appropriate the journal has published similar types of study in journal. the recent past, restrictions on word, figure and table counts, impact factor (IF), rejection/acceptance Keywords: Vaccine, Infectious diseases, Journal rates (ARs), and times between submission, accep- metrics, Impact factor, Acceptance rate tance, and publication. Much of this information can be gathered from journal websites, citation data- bases and individual publications; however, this is a Publishing in a peer-reviewed journal which is cumbersome task and would be impracticable to widely read and highly respected in the scientific undertake for each new submission. The purpose and medical communities is the primary goal of this article is to provide a database of journal when seeking to communicate important new metrics which will help authors to make informed study findings. Readers can expect that data pub- decisions about where to submit manuscripts lished in a high-quality journal will have undergone which focus on original research in the field of vac- rigorous scrutiny and that the study conclusions will cines against human infectious diseases. © The European Medical Writers Association 2012 26 DOI: 10.1179/204748112X13305147722970 Medical Writing 2012 VOL. 21 NO. 1 Portsmouth – Identifying appropriate journals in which to publish original research on vaccines against human infectious diseases Methods [Publication Type]) NOT “retraction of publi- cation” [Publication Type]) NOT “review” To identify an initial list of potential target journals [Publication Type]) NOT “letter”[Publication suitable for an international audience, an advanced Type]) AND “english”[Language]. search for English-language vaccine-related original research articles was done on PubMed2 using the algorithm: These data were then used to calculate an estimate for the proportion of vaccine-related studies as a percentage of all original research studies in each (((((((((((((((((((((((“2006”[Publication Date] : journal (%V). “2010”[Publication Date]) NOT “comment” Three different databases which provide a [Publication Type]) NOT “corrected and repub- measure of journal and article impact were then lished article”[Publication Type]) NOT “dupli- mined to extract the following journal metrics: cate publication”[Publication Type]) NOT Journal Citation Reports 2010 Impact Factor (IF), 5- “editorial”[Publication Type]) NOT “guide- year impact factor (5 Yr IF), and Immediacy line” [Publication Type]) NOT “historical Index,3 Eigen Factor Article Influence (EF AI),4 article”[Publication Type]) NOT “interview” SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) and Cites/doc (CD).5 [Publication Type]) NOT “news”[Publication To distill a core of higher ranking journals which Type]) NOT “published erratum”[Publication regularly publish vaccine-related studies, a ranking Type]) NOT “retracted publication” filter was utilized with the following cut-off criteria: [Publication Type]) NOT “retraction of publi- IF <2.0 OR V < 15 OR %V <0.5% OR (IF < 3.5 AND cation” [Publication Type]) NOT “review” V < 35 AND %V < 3.0). [Publication Type]) NOT “letter”[Publication The abstracts of articles retrieved for the remain- Type]) AND vacc*[Title]) NOT vaccini*[Title]) ing journals with <25 vaccine articles for NOT vaccr*[Title]) NOT vacca*[Title]) NOT 2006–2010 were then manually inspected to vaccinol*[Title]) NOT vaccen*[Title]) NOT remove inappropriate articles such as non-research vaccina[Title]) NOT vaccinal*[Title]) NOT articles, studies which did not actually investigate vaccinos*[Title]) AND “english”[Language]. vaccines, purely epidemiological studies, case studies, historical studies, opinion, surveys, etc. A As a second step, the list of retrieved articles was final manual inspection removed journals which sorted by journal and all journals publishing at publish vaccine studies focusing exclusively or least five articles between 2009 and 2010 (i.e. over almost exclusively on cancer, AIDS, or veterinarian 2 years) were selected. Next, the PubMed algorithm vaccines. ‘ ’ was extended to include AND x [Journal], where Additional information on the journal such as ‘ ’ x represents one of the journals identified in step focus with respect to infectious disease type two, to retrieve an estimate of the number of original (general, viral, non-viral, or diseases primarily research articles published on vaccine-related affecting tropical or developing countries) and studies over the 5-year period from 2006 to 2010 research stage (preclinical or clinical) and abridged (V). To estimate the equivalent total number of orig- aims and scope relevant to vaccine studies were inal research articles published in these journals (T), gathered from journal websites. To gain information the following PubMed search algorithm was used to on AR, time from submission to acceptance, time query each journal: from acceptance to publication, and open access (OA) status/options, a short questionnaire was (((((((((((((((((((((((“2006”[Publication Date] : sent to an email contact on the journal website. To “2010”[Publication Date]) NOT “comment” unify reported time units to half week intervals, [Publication Type]) NOT “corrected and repub- months were converted to weeks by multiplying lished article”[Publication Type]) NOT “dupli- by 4.333, days were converted to weeks by dividing cate publication”[Publication Type]) NOT by 7, and numbers were rounded up or down “editorial”[Publication Type]) NOT “guide- accordingly. When a range was reported, the line” [Publication Type]) NOT “historical median of this range was used. If there was no article”[Publication Type]) NOT “interview” response within 1 month, follow-up telephone [Publication Type]) NOT “news”[Publication calls were made. If these data were not available Type]) NOT “published erratum”[Publication or journals did not respond or were unwilling to Type]) NOT “retracted publication” supply the data, this was recorded as NA. Medical Writing 2012 VOL. 21 NO. 1 27 Portsmouth – Identifying appropriate journals in which to publish original research on vaccines against human infectious diseases Results and discussion readers but the author can pay a fee upfront for the article to be made freely available online) and A total of 2 818 596 original research articles were a small number were online-only journals which estimated to have been published in the 5-year only publish OA articles. period between 2006 and 2010, and, of these, This analysis is intended only as guide and there 15 230 (approximately 0.5%) were judged to be are a number of limitations to the study. The analy- vaccine related, as defined by the respective sis was not sensitive enough to distinguish between PubMed search algorithms. Table 1 describes the all vaccine-related and non-vaccine studies as journals which met all of the criteria to be included demonstrated by the %V score of 77 and 64% for in further analyses after filtering on the basis of IF, Human Vaccines and Vaccines, respectively, which