Summary

Changes in various aspects of the time to publication occurred in orthopaedic sports medicine journals in the years surrounding the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abstract

Background

Publication speed is an important aspect of research as this is ultimately how important research findings are communicated. With the suspension of clinical practices at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a surge of scholarly work especially among prolific researchers. This may have resulted in overwhelming journals with an increase in submission numbers, thereby leading to prolonged time to publication. The purpose of this study was to compare the time to from acceptance to publication among orthopaedic sports medicine journals around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

A convenience sample of articles published during the calendar months of January, May, and September during the years 2019 through 2021 was taken from three orthopaedic sports medicine journals: The American Journal of Sports Medicine (AJSM); Arthroscopy; and Knee Surgery, Sports Traumatology, Arthroscopy (KSSTA). The dates of manuscript submission, manuscript acceptance, electronic publication on PubMed (e-Pub), and journal issue publication were extracted for each article. The duration between each of these aspects of the manuscript publication process was calculated and compared between journals as well as between years. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS version 22 (IBM Corporation; Armonk, New York). A One-Way ANOVA was used to detect a difference between the journals and across publication years. Fisher’s exact tests were performed to compare the clinical content. An alpha level <0.05 was considered statistically significant.

Results

Overall, 826 journal articles were included in our convenience sample (Tables 1-2). There was a statistically significant difference in the publication timeline within each journal by year. In AJSM from 2020 to 2021, there was an increase in the time from submission to journal publication (2020: 284 days, 2021: 329 days, p<0.01), acceptance to e-Pub (2020: 77 days, 2021: 110 days, p<0.001), and acceptance to journal publication (2020: 128 days, 2021: 166 days, p<0.01). Arthroscopy demonstrated a significant decrease in time from acceptance to e-Pub (2019: 140 days, 2020: 74 days, 2021: 16 days, p<0.001), but an overall increase in the time from e-Pub to journal publication over the years (2019: 23 days, 2020: 74 days, 2021: 130 days, p<0.001). KSSTA showed an increase in the time from acceptance to journal publication (2019: 224 days, 2020: 352 days, p<0.001) and from e-Pub to journal publication from 2019 to 2020 (2019: 213 days, 2020: 338 days, p<0.001). Time from manuscript acceptance to journal publication was significantly longer for KSSTA compared to Arthroscopy all three years and compared to AJSM in 2020 and 2021.

Conclusion

Changes in various aspects of the time to publication occurred in orthopaedic sports medicine journals in the years surrounding the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Publication speed also differs across journals. Journals can take this information into account to determine if it is possible to improve the time from acceptance to publication.