When I teach research methods, there's a section I do on scholarship
and using sources. One of the things I go over is the "Journal Operations"
report by the APA which provides information on the number
of manuscripts submitted, accepted/rejected, and time to publication
("lag"). APA provides PDFs of the reports which are available here:
http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/statistics.aspx
In 2011, the mean "average lag in months" for the "first tier" journals
was 5.7 months (YMMV).However, consider how unlucky researchers conducting clinical trials are in getting their papers published. A "research letter" published in the "JAMA Internal Medicine" (previously "Archives of Internal Medicine"), has some bad news. First, the reference for the article:Ross JS, Mocanu M, Lampropulos JF, Tse T, Krumholz HM. Time to Publication Among Completed Clinical Trials. JAMA Intern Med. 2013;():1-3. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.136.
Next the abstract:|Prior studies have shown that 25% to 50% of clinical trials are |never published.1- 4 However, among those published, we know |little about the length of time required for publication in the |peer-reviewed biomedical literature after study completion. |Ioannidis5 previously demonstrated that a sample of randomized |phase 2 and 3 trials conducted between 1986 and 1996 required |nearly 2.5 years for publication, while our more recent study |of National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded trials found |that the average time to publication was almost 2 years.4 |We sought to determine time to publication for a recent and |representative sample of trials published in 2009.
One wonders how one would ever get tenure if they had to wait two years for a publication to appear. But then I remembered that when I was involved in grant-funded psychiatric research, preliminary results were routinely reported at conferences and, if memory serves, NIMH sponsored meetings where grantees
could present their work to other researchers. It's been a while so things might be different now but then there's this paragraph at the end of the Ross et al article: |We cannot rule out that study findings may have been |disseminated through means other than publication, including |scientific meeting presentations. However, with |the exception of public results reporting, these alternative |dissemination strategies lead to limited public awareness |of the research. Given the time required to publish |results from these clinical trials, our findings support current |federal initiatives requiring results reporting of clinical |studies within 12 months of trial completion8 to ensure |the timely dissemination of clinical science. Perhaps "public awareness" is limited of the research results, but researchers in the specific areas are probably well aware of the research (even if there are no final publications) and the programs of certain meetings provide access to preliminary results, such as the abstracts from the Meetings of the "College on Problems in Drug Dependence"; see: http://www.cpdd.vcu.edu/Pages/Meetings/MeetProgAbSearchAll.html -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=24114 or send a blank email to leave-24114-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
