Editors and research articles: a retrospective study of self-publication in biomedical research

In 2021, a large-scale survey highlighted that in a subset of biomedical journals, a few authors –often serving on the editorial board– published disproportionately and experienced shorter acceptance times. Our study aims to specifically quantify editors’ research articles within the journals in which they operate.

Methods

We selected journals indexed in Open Editors, a dataset that collects publicly available information on journal editorial boards through web scraping. Journals not indexed in PubMed, mega-journals, and those with very low publication volume were excluded. For the remaining journals, we linked the 2022 editorial boards from Open Editors to authors of research articles (i.e., original articles, case reports, and reviews) published between 2020 and 2023. For each journal, we then computed indicators describing publication patterns: the percentage of research articles (i) by the most prolific editor, (ii) with at least one editor, and (iii) by the most prolific author, as well as publication lags for each article.

Results

Across the 1,623 journals studied, the median and 95 ^th percentile of research articles are 1.78% and 6.7% for those co-authored with the most prolific editor, 12.1% and 41.1% for those with at least one editor, and 2.5% and 7.9% for those with the most prolific author. An editor was among the most prolific author(s) in 45.0% of the journals. For authors, the median and 5 ^th percentile publications lags are 99 and 35 days; for editors, it is 95 and 33 days; and for editors-in-chief, it amounts to only 84 and 12 days. An in-depth examination of journals where the most prolific editor co-authored more than 6.7% (95 ^th percentile) found a median impact factor of 3, and a median h-index of 42 for their most prolific editor(s).

Conclusion

In 5% of cases, an editor contributes to approximately >7% of the articles published in their own journal. In nearly half of the journals, the most prolific author is an editor. These results need to be complemented by a qualitative approach to examine whether research articles authored by editors appropriately address potential conflicts of interest, as required by COPE recommendations, and to better understand the motivations underlying this practice.