Online-to-print Lags and Baseline Number of Citations in 5 Science Citation Index Journals Related to Liver Diseases (2013–2014)

ObjectivesTo analyze the length of online-to-print lags in 5 science citation index (SCI) journals related to liver diseases and their effect on the number of citations at the date of print publication.DesignsAll original papers that were published between April 2013 and April 2014 in 5 SCI journals of liver diseases were systematically collected. The length of the online-to-print lag was defined as the difference between the date of print publication and the date of online publication. The number of citations for an article was obtained on its print publication date (baseline number of citations) and every month thereafter. According to the 2012 journal impact factor (JIF), the journals were divided into high-JIF (JIF ≥5) and low-JIF (JIF <5).ResultsDuring the collection period, a total of 1039 original articles were published in the 5 journals. The low-JIF journals had significantly longer online-to-print lags than the high-JIF journals (6.23 ± 2.9 months versus 4.3 ± 1.5 months, P < 0.001). The low-JIF journals had a significantly larger proportion of original articles with a baseline number of citations ≥1 than the high-JIF journals (41.9% versus 32.3%, P = 0.002). A longer online-to-print lag was positively associated with a baseline number of citations ≥1 in all 5 journals.ConclusionsOnline-to-print lags are frequently observed in 5 SCI journals related to liver diseases. In contrast to the hypothesis that JIF was positively associated with the length of online-to-print lags, our study demonstrated that the low-JIF journals had significantly longer online-to-print lags than the high-JIF journals.