Editorial board inbreeding in Latin American public health journals

Editorial inbreeding is the publication of research papers by the editor or members of the editorial committee in the journal. An excessive increase in publications by the editorial committee can suggest flaws in the editorial process. The objective of this study was to assess editorial inbreeding in Latin American public health journals and its associated factors. A manual review was carried out of all the original articles published by 16 Latin American public health journals between 2016 and 2019. The analysis variable was the presence of editorial inbreeding. Analytical statistics were carried out between the presence of inbreeding and the indexing. The journals studied published 5517 original manuscripts and short originals, of which 565 (10.2%) had at least one editor as author. There was a higher frequency of inbred manuscripts and greater inbreeding in 2019 among journals belonging to MEDLINE compared to those belonging to SciELO. The number of days from receipt to acceptance is less among inbred authors. The publication of editors in their own journals is frequent in Latin American public health journals and tends to be more frequent in journals indexed in MEDLINE.