Surveying Time Intervals between Research Completion and Submission, Acceptance and Publication in a Group of Dentistry Scientific journals

One of the most harmful factors which demolishes the quality of research is the prolong time intervals between study completion and article preparation, submission, acceptance and publication. The present study was conducted to determine the elapsed time between conducting the research and preparing the article, submission, acceptance and publication in a group of Dentistry Scientific and Research journals. For this cross sectional study, all eligible articles were surveyed according to their claimed times for carrying out the research, and the time intervals between article preparation and submission, acceptance and publication in month. According to Delphi Analysis, a research's delay will occur in either of the following situations: 1) the time consumed for conducting the research until its submission or the time interval between submission and acceptance takes more than 6 months, 2) the time interval between acceptance and publication takes more than 3 months. Finally, the association between research's delay and the following variables was determined: publisher, field of specialty, number of authors, references status (date, type, number of Persian references), and financial supporting organization. Totally, 5 journals and 474 articles were surveyed among which 39.5% were subjected for research's delay. A research's delay was noted for the time consumed for conducting the research until its submission (85%), the time interval between submission and acceptance (57.4%), and the time interval between acceptance and publication (19.4%). A research's delay was associated with publisher, number of Persian references, and older dated references. A research's delay is a serious concern among the aforementioned journals, hence, considering the recognized consequences of such delays, the required actions for shortening the intervals are requested.