BioMed Central Blog
Head & Face Medicine - a self-assessment
The Editors-in-Chief of Head & Face Medicine, Thomas Stamm, Ulrich Meyer and Hans-Peter Wiesman, recently took a step further in their aim to have completely transparent editorial processes and published a self-assessment. The study, which was carried out over a one-year period, evaluates the characteristics of submissions, the effectiveness of open peer reviewing, and factors biasing acceptance or rejection of submitted manuscripts in the journal.
Facts and figures from the one-year study period are:
- 126 articles (10.5 articles/month) submitted
- Peer review completed for 82 articles
- 431 peer reviewers were invited (averaging 5.3/manuscript)
- 40.4% of invited reviewers agreed to review
- Mean peer review time was 37.8 days
- Acceptance rate of 48.8%
- Mean time between submission and acceptance (including revision) was 95.9 days
- Mean time between manuscript submission and PubMed inclusion was 101.3 days
- Main article types submitted were original research, reviews, and case reports
- Article type had no influence on rejection or acceptance
- Variable number of invited reviewers is the only significant (p<0.05) predictor for rejection of manuscripts
It is pleasing to see the steady rate of submissions to this journal and also that times from submission to first decision are shorter than the 6-week target the Editor’s set themselves.
Through their assessment, the Editor’s found that rejection of manuscripts was associated with the number of invited reviewers; all other measured parameters had no effect on the final decision. Thus, Head & Face Medicine’s editorial policies, which are based on open access, open peer, and transparency of journal operations, is free of editorial bias in accepting manuscripts.
The complete study (including all of the original data) is available online:
A retrospective analysis of
submissions, acceptance rate, open peer review operations, and prepublication
bias of the multidisciplinary open access journal Head & Face Medicine
Thomas Stamm, Ulrich Meyer, Hans-Peter Wiesmann, Johannes
Kleinheinz, Murat Cehreli and Zafer C Cehreli
Head & Face Medicine 2007, 3:27
Posted by Charlotte Hubbard at 17:04 Comments (0)
