Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Data Science and Advanced Analytics, specialization in Data ScienceThe aim of this study is to analyze the differences in article publishing delay times from different perspectives. Previous works on the topic suggest there are significant differences between article publication times, which has a direct effect on the author’s personal and professional life. However, as the required dates for the analysis are not available in article databases, the works on the topic are limited to certain publishers/databases.
Using the entire Scimago Journal Ranking Q1 journal pool, this study creates a representative and comprehensive article dataset, containing submittance, acceptance and publication dates for over 200,000 sampled articles from 27 different subject areas between 2010-2020. This allows publishing delay times to be analyzed from different perspectives and offers a baseline for any future studies.
The study shows clear delay time differences between subject areas. The shortest delay time occurs in Life Sciences articles, with an average delay of 6 months, three times quicker overall than Social Sciences articles. Publication year analysis shows that while delay times are improving over time, this improvement is coming from acceptance to publication time delay, driven by the increase of digital publications. Delay times do not show the same improvement for the more problematic submission to acceptance delay, highlighting the reviewing process. Open Access journals offer an alternative to the traditional publications, and are faster overall, however their performances started to stagnate as number of publications increased each year.
Author affiliated country data is not balanced, and the dataset is dominated by submissions from certain countries, namely United States, China, United Kingdom, and Germany, indicating these countries’ overall dominance on the scientific domain. However, matching analysis shows that an affiliated county’s “Global North vs. South”, “English as first language”, and “G7 membership” status do not play a significant role in their subsequent delay times, indicating a fair refereeing
