ObjectiveTo understand the academic indexes of solicited articles in the invited column in 2018 of Shanghai Journal of Preventive Medicine, and to improve the academic quality of comprehensive preventive medicine journals by building solid and scientific basis for soliciting contributions.

MethodsAll articles in the invited columns in the year of 2018, the second year of systemic solicited contribution were collected as research group, and the following columns in each journal were selected as control group.The number of authors, funding, pages, cited references, lag-time for publication, downloads from CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure), citations, adjusted downloads, adjusted citations were analyzed and compared in each group.Other indexes such as difference in months, type of articles (social sciences, field studies, experimental researches), residential places, funding kinds, lag-time for publications were compared in influencing the academic quality and values such as number of authors, cited references, downloads, citations, and adjusted downloads, adjusted citations.

ResultsThe average of lag-time in research group was 129.73 days, which was significantly differ to the 206.95 days of control group (P < 0.001).There were no differences for other indexes such as number of authors, funding, pages, cited references, downloads and citations.The adjusted downloads in Jan, Mar, Apr of research groups were better than that of the control (P < 0.05).The adjusted downloads in May, Nov, Dec of control groups were better than that of the research groups (P < 0.05).And the adjusted citation of control group in Oct was better than that of the research group (P < 0.05).The social sciences defined as editorials, reviews and reading introduction here had the least authors (P < 0.001).The experimental articles had longest lag-time, but social sciences had the shortest lag-time (P < 0.001) and had the most downloads (P < 0.05).The experimental articles had the most citations as well (P < 0.05).The local articles in area of cited references, lag-time for publication, downloads, citations and adjusted downloads, adjusted citations were better than the authors out of Shanghai (P < 0.05).The national or global funded articles in number of authors, pages, cited references were better than the other 2 groups (P < 0.05).The < 100 d group of lag-time in area of funding, downloads, citations and adjusted downloads, adjusted citations were better than the other 2 groups (P < 0.05).

ConclusionThe solicited contributions have better academic indexes than the other submissions in most of indexes somehow.The Journal should solicit better articles in term of type of articles and sources, in order to improve the quality of articles by balancing the submitting sources and experimental articles at the same time.