Fate of manuscripts previously rejected by the American Journal of Neuroradiology: a follow-up analysis

Abstract

Background and purpose: This is a follow-up article to "Fate of Submitted Manuscripts Rejected from the American Journal of Neuroradiology: Outcomes and Commentary." The purpose of this study was to quantify differences in citation frequency between manuscripts published in the American Journal of Neuroradiology (AJNR) and those published after AJNR rejection and to understand citation frequency differences among rejected manuscripts.

Materials and methods: In this study, a MEDLINE search identified all manuscripts published in AJNR in 2005 and those initially rejected by AJNR in 2004 but subsequently published elsewhere. Once identified, the citation frequencies of both groups were determined by using SCOPUS. Citation data were used in comparative studies between AJNR rejected and accepted articles and in studies comparing citation frequency differences among rejected manuscripts as a function of journal and/or publication classifications.

Results: Among 315 subsequently published rejections from AJNR in 2004, 696 citations accumulated between 2005 and 2007 (2.4 citations/journal year), whereas 441 AJNR articles published in 2005 accumulated 2490 citations between 2005 and 2007 (6.4 citations/journal year, P < .0001). One-way analysis of variance suggested that rejected manuscripts classified as technical reports and/or published in journals classified as either neuroradiology or general radiology had significantly higher citation frequencies than other submission types and journal classifications. Nonparametric analysis of citation frequency showed significant correlations with impact factors of respective publishing journals (rho = 0.444).

Conclusion: Results from this study suggest that publications initially rejected from AJNR have a significantly lower citation frequency than those accepted by AJNR. Among rejected manuscripts, citations frequencies were highest in technical reports and among journals close to the neuroradiologic discipline.

Fig 1.

Citation frequency histogram of initially rejected and AJNR-published articles. Cumulative citation frequency distributions (eg, the number of times individual manuscripts were cited after publication from 1/1/2005 through 12/31/2007) of each cohort are shown in the 2 histograms. The x-axis represents the number of times any given publication was cited during the 3-year span, whereas the y-axis represents the cumulative citation frequency of each discrete group.