Variables affecting evaluation and publication of oncology case reports: a systematic analysis

Studies on factors affecting editorial decisions of scientific journals are scarce. In this study, we focused on case reports submitted to oncology journals and analyzed whether their nature or other relevant variables affected the chances of their acceptance.

We analyzed case reports submitted to 2 oncology journals: Tumori Journal and The International Journal of Biological Markers, and split them into 3 predefined groups: those (a) describing rare or unusual presentation of diseases, (b) describing the side effects of an intervention or (c) describing the success of a novel intervention. Publication status was retrospectively retrieved from the submission system, and acceptance rates were calculated taking into account other variables including geographic location of corresponding author.

A total of 326 case reports were suitable for analysis. The acceptance rate was 35.4% for group (a), 27.9% for group (b), 19.6% for group (c) (p = 0.01). After correcting for other variables, the odds ratio (OR) of being accepted for group (c) was 0.58 (95% CI, 0.33-1.00) compared with the other groups combined. There was a highly significant difference of acceptance rates between manuscripts with authors coming from developed vs. developing countries that remained significant (OR = 5.94; 95% CI, 3.05-10.09) after correcting for multiple variables.

The nature of a case report in oncology may affect acceptance rate, with case reports describing successful approaches or side effects of treatment being accepted with a higher frequency then case reports describing a rare clinical or diagnostic scenario. Also, works coming from developed countries are accepted significantly more frequently than case reports coming from developing countries.