OriginalFate of rejected manuscripts in the journal Medicina Intensiva during 2015–2017 periodDestino de los artículos rechazados en Medicina Intensiva en el período 2015–2017☆
Introduction
Peer review is the standard used by scientific journals to select articles for publication. However, there is no procedure to ensure that certain papers of sufficient quality are not rejected, or that some studies with methodological deficiencies are not accepted.1
High impact factor (IF) journals reject many of the originals they receive. This is due both to the quality demands of the editorial committees and to the need to present a limited number of papers in order to keep the IF high, since this is associated to the prestige of the journal.2
This rejection rate in turn gives rise to a wave of submissions to other journals, usually of lower IF, which again review the article using the same system. This phenomenon has been evaluated in many previous studies.3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 In this evaluation circuit, the original text may gain quality thanks to the recommendations of the editorial teams and reviewers,17 or alternatively the text may become obsolete upon being rejected on several occasions. A high publication rate following a rejection may indicate either low quality of the review process or the need to limit the publications in the original journal in order to maintain its IF.3 A low publication rate after rejection may reflect the poor quality of the submitted originals, indicating limited interest on the part of the original journal.
Another issue is referred to the IF of the journals that posteriorly publish the rejected originals. It is to be expected that authors who see their paper being rejected will seek to publish it in journals with a lower IF.3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17 This is not always the case, however, and the IF of the alternative journal may actually be higher than that of the original journal, thus indicating inadequate assessment of the quality of the document by the latter.
The citations that arise from secondary publications are also indicators of the quality of the editorial process, though they often appear in journals belonging to other categories.20 The non-detection of articles that generate many citations could affect the IF of a journal as a loss of opportunity, and should be regarded by the editorial team as a sentinel event of the process if publication is made in a journal of the same category.
The aim of the present study was to analyze the publication in other journals and the generation of citations of articles rejected by the editorial board of Medicina Intensiva (MI), investigating the variables associated to such publication.
Section snippets
Material and methods
A retrospective study was made of the originals and scientific letters rejected by the editorial board of MI in the period 2015–2017, and which were published in other scientific journals between 2015–2019. The year 2015 was selected as the starting point, coinciding with the change in editorial team.
Use was made of a database of rejected articles provided by the Publisher Elsevier containing all the documents rejected in the mentioned period and which included the title, authors, submitting
Results
In the period 2015–2017, a total of 360 originals and 278 scientific letters were received for evaluation by the editorial board of MI. Based on the signing authors, a total of 16 originals and 15 letters were removed, thus leaving 344 originals and 263 scientific letters for analysis (Fig. 1). The overall rejection rate was 69.2%, distributed over the three years as follows: 69.1% (2015), 67.4% (2016) and 70.8% (2017) (p = 0.69).
Of the 420 rejected articles, there were more originals (n = 241;
Discussion
The present study shows that the publication rate following editorial rejection by MI is comparable to that of other journals, and that such publication mainly takes place in journals with a lower IF or belonging to categories different from intensive care. Furthermore, the publication rate varies according to the geographical origin of the article, the language in which it is written, and the gender of the author, as well as evaluation by the reviewers.
The overall rejection rate of manuscripts
Conclusions
The articles rejected in MI show a stable subsequent publication rate, similar to that of other journals. Most of these texts are published in journals with a lower IF and with a number of citations below the IF of MI. A European or North American origin, papers in English, a woman as submitting person, and evaluation by reviewers are variables associated to a higher rate of posterior publication in journals indexed in PubMed.
Author contributions
José Luis García Garmendia, data generation and compilation, data analysis, drafting of first manuscript. Federico Gordo Vidal, data generation and compilation, review of the text. Santiago Ramón Leal-Noval, data generation and compilation, review of the text. Rosario Amaya Villar, data generation and compilation, review of the text. Néstor Raimondi, data generation and compilation, review of the text. Ana Ochagavía Calvo, review of the text. José Garnacho Montero, original idea, data
Financial support
This study has received no financial support.
Conflicts of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to Montserrat Miralles Alemany and Montserrat Valero, of the Publisher Elsevier, for their crucial collaboration in obtaining the information for this article.
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Please cite this article as: García-Garmendia JL, Gordo-Vidal F, Leal-Noval SR, Amaya-Villar R, Raimondi N, Ochagavía-Calvo A, et al. Destino de los artículos rechazados en Medicina Intensiva en el período 2015–2017. Med Intensiva. 2021;45:271–279.