Potential factors of specialists' willingness to write editorial and commentary: a retrospective study based on 5,091 invitations

Abstract

Background: Editorials and commentaries (E/C) are common article categories and usually solicited by editors in many journals. However, not all experts accept invitation for an E/C essay for a variety of reasons. We conducted this study to explore the potential influence factors contributing whether an invitation to write E/C is accepted by a specialist.

Methods: Data of invited E/C from all journals of AME Publishing Company between January 1^st, 2018 and December 31^st, 2018 were retrospectively identified and consecutively collected. Acceptance of writing E/C from experts was recorded as "positive", while acceptance without submission, refusal, or no response, were all recorded as "negative". Factors that could potentially affect invitation acceptance were generally categorized as being related to three areas: original studies, inviting journals, and experts.

Results: A total of 5,091 invitations were sent to 4,788 experts from 79 different countries or areas to write E/C on 695 research papers from 43 journals, with a total positive acceptance rate of 18.88%. Greece (40.54%), India (36.8%), and Brazil (35.42%) were the top three countries for acceptance rate. Surgeons (surgeons 23.80% vs. non-surgeons 17.05%; P<0.001) and oncologists (oncologists 22.57% vs. non-oncologists 17.58%; P=0.029) were more likely to accept the E/C invitations. The acceptance rate decreased with the increasing number of published articles of an expert (P=0.005). The acceptance rate was the highest (28.03%) when an inviting journal was indexed in both SCIE and PubMed. ABS, VATS and JTD ranked as the top three journals with the highest invitation acceptance rate. The impact factor of journals on which original papers were published had a negative correlation with the invitation acceptance rate (P=0.015). Database-related studies had the highest acceptance rate (21.66%), while translational (16.49%) and basic studies (16.56%) had a significantly lower acceptance rate among all study types.

Conclusion: Original studies, inviting journals, and expert-related factors were all influence factors on the acceptance rate/willingness to write of E/C from invitations.

Keywords: AME Publishing Company; Editorials; academic communication; commentary.

Figure 1

Flow chart of invitation screening.

Figure 2

An overview of editorial and commentary invitation and acceptance. (A) The nationality distribution of invited international experts; (B) the acceptance rate distribution of E/C invitations on research studies; (C) the distribution of invited E/C published in AME journals. E/C, editorials and commentaries.

Figure 3

Influence factors of acceptance rate (experts). (A) Acceptance rate of E/C by countries or areas; (B) the distribution of experts’ publications in the acceptance and failure group; (C) the acceptance rate of experts according to their number of published articles; (D) the acceptance rate distribution according to the number of invitations. E/C, editorials and commentaries.

Figure 4

Influence factors of acceptance rate (inviting journals). (A) Acceptance rate of invited E/C in different journals of AME; (B) acceptance rate of E/C in journals of AME with different index situations. E/C, editorials and commentaries.

Figure 5

Influence factors of acceptance rate (original papers). (A) Acceptance rate of E/C commenting on journals with diverse impact factors; (B) acceptance rate for E/C according to the period between E/C invitation and the time of printing the inviting papers; (C) acceptance rate for E/C according to study types of inviting papers; (D) acceptance rate for E/C according to study areas of inviting papers. E/C, editorials and commentaries.