Scientometrics (2011) 86:227–233

DOI 10.1007/s11192-010-0207-7

Analysis of a number and type of publications

that editors publish in their own journals: case study
of scholarly journals in Croatia

Lana Bošnjak • Livia Puljak • Katarina Vukojević • Ana Marušić

Received: 26 February 2010 / Published online: 11 March 2010

Ó Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary 2010

Abstract To assess the publication practices of editors in their own journals, we analysed
the number of articles that Croatian editors published in the journals they edit. From 2005
to 2008, 256 decision-making editors of 180 journals published a total of 887 publications
in their own journals. Out of these, 332 were relevant for their academic promotion. Only
18 editors published 5 or more articles in their own journals. A single journal had regu-
lations for self-publishing in the instructions for authors. Although the majority of editors
did not misuse their own journals for scientific publishing and academic promotion, there is
a need for greater transparency of the declaration and management of editorial conflict of
interest in academic and scholarly journals.

Keywords Journal editors
Publishing
Conflict of interest
Guidelines for authors

Transparency

Introduction

When we consider the editors as ‘‘gatekeepers’’ (Crane 1967) we often forget that they too,
in order to advance in their professional careers, from time to time must pass through the
gates they keep. In order to do that, they should ensure that they pass through the same

L. Bošnjak
Office for Research, School of Medicine, University of Split, Šoltanska 2, 21000 Split, Croatia

L. Puljak
K. Vukojević
Department of Anatomy, Histology and Embryology, School of Medicine, University of Split,
Šoltanska 2, 21000 Split, Croatia

A. Marušić (&)
Department of Research Methodology, School of Medicine, University of Split,
Šoltanska 2, 21000 Split, Croatia
e-mail: ana.marusic@mefst.hr; ana.marusic@mef.hr

A. Marušić
Agency for Science and Higher Education, Donje Svetice 38, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia

123
228 L. Bošnjak et al.

gates as the other authors, i.e., that possible biases and conflicts of interest are declared and
managed.
Evidence for self-publication practices of journal editors is scarce. A study of three
competing medical journals demonstrated that journals were more likely to publish reports
from their own editorial boards (Luty et al. 2009). Recently, an editor-in-chief faced crit-
icism for using his journal’s pages for publishing numerous papers written by himself
(Schiermeier 2008). This editor authored five out of the 36 papers in one issue of the journal
alone. The apparent misuse of editorial privileges in this particular case has sparked calls for
a more transparent peer-review process across journals. However, the issue at stake is not
only the conflict of interest during peer-review in general, but also how journals should
handle manuscripts authored by decision-making editors and other persons with a vested
interest in the journal, such as members of the editorial, management or advisory boards. In
small scientific communities, where editors are usually active researchers or university
professors and take on their journal position as a voluntary or at most a part-time position
(Marusic 2009) and where the ‘‘publish or perish’’ game is as intense as in the mainstream
science (Neill 2008), it may be difficult to resolve this obvious conflict of interest.
As the evidence on editors’ publishing in their own journals is only anecdotal, we used
the national database of peer-reviewed scientific journals from all research fields in
Croatia, HRCAK, to study the publication practices of editors in their own journals.
Croatia has a strong presence of scientific journals in international bibliographical and
citation databases (Sambunjak et al. 2008), and currently has 58 journals in the Science
Citation Index Extended (Web of Science) database of the Thomson Reuters (JCR 2009).
We analyzed the number of articles that Croatian editors published in their own journals
and the presence of information on addressing this potential conflict of interest in the
journals’ guidelines for authors.

Methods

Databases

HRCAK is the central database of full text articles from Croatian scientific journals
(HRCAK 2009; JCR 2009). It was opened in 2005 with the aim to be the central open
access initiative portal for Croatian scholarly journals (Toth 2007) and to increase the
visibility of Croatian scholarly journals (Klarin et al. 2001).
For journals not indexed in the HRCAK database but published in Croatia and receiving
support from the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports, the publications of the editors
was evaluated in the Web of Science or SCOPUS citation databases.

Data base analysis

We limited our search of Croatian journals in HRCAK and the Web of Science or SCOPUS
to the period from 2005 to 2008, because all journals indexed in HRCAK at the time of this
analysis (n = 167) had their contents available for that period. For each journal, we
obtained the names of the editorial board members form the editors’ list page published in
journals or their web pages. We then compared publicly available data with the list
received from the Ministry to make sure that the information collected was accurate and
complete. The sample of persons with editorial or decision-making function included the
editors in chief, associate editors, assistant editors, managing editors, executive editors,

123
Self-publishing of Croatian editors 229

senior editors, and technical editors—they were all considered editors in a general sense.
We did not limit our study to editors in chief because this position is often an honorary one,
and the editorial decisions can be made by other members of the editorial office or board.
Bibliographical databases were then searched to identify all items published by the editors
in their own journals. For editors who had more than 5 publications relevant for their
academic advancement (original research articles, reviews, professional papers, and brief
research reports) we evaluated their publications in journals other than their own by
searching the available bibliographical databases from different scientific disciplines:
Medline/PubMed, PsychINFO, Agricola, Erich, Current Contents, Inspec, SCOPUS, and
Web of Science. For editors whose journals were indexed in the Web of Science or
SCOPUS and not in HRCAK, we identified their publications in their own journal and
other journals by searching the relevant database.
We also searched the instructions for authors of all journals for any information
regarding the editorial policy or restrictions imposed on self-publishing of editors and
members of the editorial board.

Results

Self-publishing in own journal

We identified 167 journals with full content during the period 2005–2008 in the HRCAK
database and 13 journals indexed in the Web of Science or SCOPUS but not in HRCAK.
Journals from HRCAK had a total of 172 editors-in-chief and 84 other editors (associate,
executive, or junior). Within the period from 2005 to 2008, these editors published a total
of 887 publication items in their own journals (median = 1, range 0–90 per editor). Out of
these items published in their own journals, 332 (37.2%) were relevant for official
requirements for academic promotion: 204 original articles (median 0, range 0–15 per
editors), 66 professional articles (0, 0–8) and 62 review articles (0, 0–5).
Out of 13 editors of Croatian journals indexed in the Web of Science or SCOPUS but not
in HRCAK database, 2 editors had more than 5 articles in their own journal but they also
had rather high total number of articles (20 and 25 in their own journals versus 90 and 103
total published articles, respectively).
Almost a half of the editors did not publish any articles relevant for academic promotion
in their own journals; 18 (6.6%) editors published 5 or more articles in their own journals
(Table 1).

Table 1 Articles relevant for

Number of articles Number of
academic promotion published
published in own editors (%)
by 269 Croatian editors in their
journal
own journals
0 121 (45.0)
1 74 (27.5)
2 32 (11.9)
Articles relevant for academic
promotion included original 3 15 (5.5)
research articles, reviews, 4 9 (3.3)
professional papers, and brief C5 18 (6.6)
research reports

123
230 L. Bošnjak et al.

The total of 18 editors (16 from HRCAK journals and 2 from other journals) published 5
or more articles relevant for academic promotion in their own journals in 2005–2008, and
the number of these articles ranged from 5 (in 8 editors) to 25 (one editor). Of these 18
editors with high self-publishing figures, 11 (61%) had less than 5 articles published in
other international journals indexed in Current Contents, and 6 (33%) editors had less than
5 articles published in other journals indexed in SCOPUS in the analyzed period (Table 2).
Two editors published exclusively in their own journals (editors No. 8 and 12 in Table 2).

Guidelines about self-publishing

Among 180 analyzed journals 17 did not have instructions for authors publicly available,
either on the HRCAK web site or on the journal web site. The analysis of the instructions
for authors in 163 journals showed that, at the time of analysis, none of the journals had a
policy on the manuscript submissions by journal editors. A single journal, the Croatian
Medical Journal, had a statement on the restrictions of published articles from authors,
including editorial members.
Among 163 analyzed instructions for authors, only 14 indicated that manuscripts should
be prepared according to the guidelines of a relevant international organization. The
International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) was the most frequently cited

Table 2 Publications of 18 editors with C5 articles published in their own journal versus publications in
other journals
Editor Journal’s research field No. articles in

Own journaa Other journals, Other journals,

Current Contents SCOPUS

1 Natural sci./engineering 5 39 44
2 Medicine 5 0 8
3 Medicine 5 16 27
4 Medicine 5 0 21
5 Natural sci./engineering 5 0 6
6 Humanities 5 0 1
7 Social sciences 5 0 2
8 Natural sci./engineering 5 0 0
9 Natural sci./engineering 6 0 19
10 Social sciences 7 3 0
11 Social sciences 7 4 5
12 Humanities 9 0 0
13 Social sciences 9 3 9
14 Natural sci./engineering 13 10 3
15 Natural sci./engineering 14 7 42
16 Medicine 15 21 60
17 Medicine 20 14 90
18 Natural sci./engineering 25 52 103
Ranking by the number of articles published in own journals in comparison to articles in journals indexed in
different databases (Medline/PubMed, PschINFO, Agricola, Erich, Current Contents, Inspec, SCOPUS, and
Web of Science). The articles indexed in Current Contents and SCOPUS may overlap
a
Data for rows 1–16 are from HRCAK and rows 17–18 from SCOPUS for journals not indexed in HRCAK

123
Self-publishing of Croatian editors 231

organization in the journals from biomedicine and health (n = 13). Two of those 13
journals also subscribed to the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE),
and one referred also to the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME). There was a
single non-biomedical journal that referred authors to prepare manuscripts according to the
requirements of a relevant organization—American Psychological Association in this case.
References to international organizations were mostly in the form of web page
addresses (9/14 instructions), journal references (3/14) or only the name of the organization
was mentioned (2/14). Out of 3 journals with literature references, all cited ICMJE’s
Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and
Editing for Biomedical Publication (ICMJE 2008). However, all 3 reference citations were
for older versions of the ICMJE Uniform Requirements, from 1988, 1991 or 1997, and not
the latest update from 2008 (ICMJE 2008).

Discussion

The case study of Croatian journals and scientific articles published by the journal editors
in their own journals demonstrated that the majority of journal editors did not misuse their
own journals for scientific publishing and academic promotion. In the analyzed 4-year
period, 8% of editors published more than 5 articles relevant for academic promotion in the
journals that they edited. Extreme self-publishing cases were rare, as only 2 out of those
editors published solely in their own journals. However, when these results are considered
in view of the fact that none of the journals had any stated policy on the publications and
management of submissions by journal editors, the lack of transparency for the conflict of
interests of the editors as gate-keepers emerges as a serious problem in scientific
publishing.
The possible reason for the lack of transparency of editors’ publications in their own
journals may be in their ignorance of the publishing policies established by editorial
organizations, as only 8.6% of the journals with instructions for authors made reference to
guidelines of either an editorial or professional organization. The lack of guidance on best
publishing practices is not a specific feature of the Croatian scientific journals, as the
editors from scholarly and academic journals generally do not have expertise in scientific
publishing enterprise, and do not follow well the established international guidelines
(Wager 2007).
In biomedicine, the most widely known and accepted guidelines from the ICMJE (Huth
and Case 2004), ‘‘Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical
Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication’’ address this issue under the
section of potential conflicts of interest (ICMJE 2008): II.D.3. Potential Conflicts of
Interest Related to Commitments of Editors, Journal Staff, or Reviewers—‘‘Editors who
make final decisions about manuscripts must have no personal, professional, or financial
involvement in any of the issues they might judge. Other members of the editorial staff, if
they participate in editorial decisions, must provide editors with a current description of
their financial interests (as they might relate to editorial judgments) and recuse themselves
from any decisions in which a conflict of interest exists. Editorial staff must not use
information gained through working with manuscripts for private gain. Editors should
publish regular disclosure statements about potential conflicts of interests related to the
commitments of journal staff.’’ The largest association of editors from all scientific fields,
the COPE, addresses self-publishing in even more detail in its opinion on a case (COPE
2005): ‘‘The issue here basically revolves around whether it is acceptable for editors to

123
232 L. Bošnjak et al.

publish their own work in their journals; if it is, then the review process must be made as
transparent and rigorous as possible. Certainly there are examples of editors publishing
studies in their own journals, particularly in those circumstances where the choice of
journals is limited, as in this case. Provided every effort is made to minimise any bias in the
review process by having another associate editor handle the peer review procedure
independently of the editor (recognising that it would be impossible to remove bias
completely), and the process is absolutely transparent, then this would be the most
appropriate route to take. It was suggested that the editor send the article out for review
without any names on it, but he said the subject field was so narrow and specialised that
any reviewer would know who had written the paper. As an extra precaution, if and when
the article in question is published, the editor might like to publish an accompanying
commentary showing how transparent the reviewing process had been.’’
Although guidance on self publishing exists, it is not clearly endorsed by the editors or
publishers. Our case study focused on a group of journals from a small scientific com-
munity and thus our results have limited external validity, but there is evidence that
editorial policies are not well endorsed by journals, regardless of their size and importance
(Altman 2005; Schriger et al. 2006; Wager 2007). To the best of our knowledge, this is the
first systematic study of self publishing by editors in their own journals.
In conclusion, self-publishing of journal editors is a common finding in scholarly and
academic journals, but is rarely misused by editors as the sole way of publishing research
results. Journal editors should pay more attention to ensure the transparency of the pub-
lishing process not only for their authors but also for themselves and other persons with a
vested interest in the journal. Editors should regard transparent procedures about self-
publications as a part of their responsibility for the published record (Marusic et al. 2007),
as well as an important element of quality improvement in their journals (Matarese 2008),
and serve as educators of their research communities (Marusic and Marusic 2001). Other
stakeholders in the scientific publishing, particularly the funding agencies and scholarly
associations and institutions supporting the publication of these journals, should take
seriously their own responsibility for the transparency of publishing research.

Acknowledgment This study was supported by the research grant from the Committee on Publication
Ethics (COPE) in 2009.

Conflict of interest declaration AM is the editor in chief of the Croatian Medical Journal, one of the
journals included in the study.

References

Altman, D. G. (2005). Endorsement of the CONSORT statement by high impact medical journals: Survey of
instructions for authors. BMJ, 330, 1056–1057.
COPE (2005). Committee on Publication Ethics. Editor as author in own journal. Available at
http://publicationethics.org/case/editor-author-own-journal. Accessed February 25, 2009.
Crane, D. (1967). The gatekeepers of science: Some factors affecting the selection of articles of scientific
journals. The American Sociologist, 2, 195–201.
HRCAK (2009). Portal of scientific journals in Croatia. Available at http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php.
Accessed February 25, 2009.
Huth, E. J., & Case, K. (2004). The URM: Twenty-five years old. Science Editor, 27, 17–21.
ICMJE (2008). International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Uniform requirements for manuscripts
submitted to biomedical journals: Writing and editing for biomedical publication. Available at
http://www.icmje.org. Accessed February 25, 2009.

123
Self-publishing of Croatian editors 233

JCR (2009). Thomson scientific. Impact factor definition. Available at http://scientific.thomson.com/free/

essays/journalcitationreports/impactfactor/. Accessed February 25, 2009.
Klarin, S., Pavelic, D., & Pigac, S. (2001). Croatian electronic publishing—Results of a survey on e-serials
and usage of metadata. Libraries in the digital age, LIDA. Available at http://www.ffzg.hr/infoz/
lida/lida2001/present/klarin.ppt. Accessed February 25, 2009.
Luty, J., Arokiadass, S. M., Easow, J. M., & Anapreddy, J. R. (2009). Preferential publication of editorial
board members in medical specialty journals. Journal of Medical Ethics, 35, 200–202.
Marusic, M. (2009). Conflict of interest for editor: Sweet and sad choices. Croatian Medical Journal, 50,
342–344.
Marusic, A., Katavic, V., & Marusic, M. (2007). Role of editors and journals in detecting and preventing
scientific misconduct: Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Medicine and Law, 26, 545–
566.
Marusic, M., & Marusic, A. (2001). Good editorial practice: Editors as educators. Croatian Medical
Journal, 42(2), 113–120.
Matarese, V. (2008). Relationship between quality and editorial leadership of biomedical research journals:
A comparative study of Italian and UK journals. PLoS One, 3, e2512.
Neill, U. S. (2008). Publish or perish, but at what cost. The Journal of Clinical Investigation, 118, 2368.
Sambunjak, D., Ivanis, A., Marusic, A., & Marusic, M. (2008). Representation of journals from five
neighboring European countries in the journal citation reports. Scientometrics, 76, 261–271.
Schiermeier, Q. (2008). Self-publishing editor set to retire. Nature, 456, 432.
Schriger, D. L., Arora, S., & Altman, D. G. (2006). The content of medical journal instructions for authors.
Annals of Emergency Medicine, 48, 743–749, 749 e1–4.
Toth, T. (2007). [Hrcak after one year] Article in Croatian. Kem Ind, 56(9), 458–460. Available at
http://knjiznica.irb.hr/hrv/kui/vol56/broj09/458.pdf. Accessed February 25, 2009.
Wager, E. (2007). Do medical journals provide clear and consistent guidelines on authorship. MedGenMed,
9, 16.

123