Publication Delay of International Scientific Papers: A Multidisciplinary Comparative Study

In this research the contribution of different factors resulting in the delay of publication of papers from submitting through publication process was studied. Due to the fact that publication delay might happen in different phases in other majors and fields so we have compared and studied this phenomenon in seven sciences and social sciences disciplines. We have examined 11,598 papers which have been published in 102 journals in 2009. The results showed that maximum and minimum time period in three stages belonged to received-revised which lasts eight months and the revised-accepted which lasted one month. Time periods in reviewing papers were different for different subject areas and only few percentages of journals had relatively low publication delay. The findings indicated that 56 % of chemistry papers, 57% of biology papers, 47% of surgery papers, 72% of papers in computer, 89% of economy papers, 96% of management papers and 71% of papers in library and information science have been published in more than six months. Finally and due to the delay efficacy as an efficacious indicator in increasing and decreasing of journals impact factors, can be said that these figures can be an alarm for journals officials in order to decreasing these delays and increasing their journals impact factor.