I think there are no standard rules concerning the time required to write an article. You also could add the time devoted to modifying contents of manuscripts after you received comments from editors or referees or colleagues....? So an additional question might be: What is the difference in time required to write an unpublished article versus a published article?

Somebody told me there is a difference of ca. 5 years between the start of a (new) study and the publication of the results from this (new) study. Here again all will depend on whether you can exploit existing data for analysis or whether you have to gather the data yourself.

In the past few years, nearly all my colleagues in this college got stuck in their writing. Only one other friend who teaches Chemistry, Sharifah, attended an international conference with me in Penang, and presented a paper on PBL. I presented a paper in 2012, three in conferences in 2013 and published 1 more in a journal. Now I'm working hard at my writing, but there seems so much to do, when the core business is to teach.

I cannot expect how much time I need to conduct a research paper for a conference or to be published in a journal. This depends on the purpose and the nature of the study, whether it is a field study, empirical study, sample size, number of variables, and so on.

Dear Miranda:

Based on experience, and given other major work, I would say that a fully-revised 4-page conference paper would require about 20 hours to complete from scratch and distributed over several days. This includes figures and tables. For a journal article, the process takes a longer time: from two week to one month.

Thank you @Mahfuz, and @Ziad. I was working on the paper for some time. Then when I need to check something online, I turn on my 4G device, and do all my checking, including emails.

When I need to focus, I can't multitask; it isn't just men who can't multitask all the time!

I think there are no standard rules concerning the time required to write an article. You also could add the time devoted to modifying contents of manuscripts after you received comments from editors or referees or colleagues....? So an additional question might be: What is the difference in time required to write an unpublished article versus a published article?

Somebody told me there is a difference of ca. 5 years between the start of a (new) study and the publication of the results from this (new) study. Here again all will depend on whether you can exploit existing data for analysis or whether you have to gather the data yourself.

Dear @Miranda, time for writing a paper varies from several months to 16 years. It took me 16 years to write the following paper:

High accuracy Hermite approximation for space curves in R d

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/243013705_High_accuracy_Hermite_approximation_for_space_curves_in_R_d?ev=prf_pub

Article High accuracy Hermite approximation for space curves in R d

Dear Miranda

Even if it is a conference paper, it is indeed difficult to say how much time it will take to complete. It will depend on so many factors, including the type of data, sources of data, number of respondents, how many hours a day you work, etc. In case, one is using all secondary data, still it will take not less than a week to complete.

Revision itself will take a lot of time. One has to do it several times so as to promote coherence. I also have this tendency of postponing things till it reaches close to the deadline!

Two weeks!

Dearth of appropriate, pertinent and/or relevant articles and/or papers is frequently the biggest impediment!

Period!

You can not generalize a paper writing, it varies person to person, subject to subject, journal to journal etc. However, if I am to write a:: review it takes max 2-3 weeks, invited theme paper/lecture (abstract in 30 minutes and full paper in 5-7 days), paper for a reputed journal it takes 1-3 months (I avoid publishing in journals, better I share my idea/work/results with research students in general).

For effective, efficient and error free writing you should be aware of three things:

1. Designing and development of bibliographic as well as full text databases

2. Use of Licensed Reference Manager or EndNote or similar packages

3. Operations/functions in MS Word

4. Outline/title/topic of the paper

Materials and methods you have to write separately

Using these four, one can finish thesis writing in one month max

I wrote a 6 - page paper for a week, then take 2 days rest, then reread and revised for another 2 days.Then rest again for another 2 days before revisit and revised. So, all in all - 2 weeks.

Thanks for all your responses. Any author on RG will get encouragement from all this. @Tobias, I agree too well: 'Dearth of appropriate, pertinent and/or relevant articles and/or papers is frequently the biggest impediment!'

@Peter et al., I need better luck because there are few conferences here, and I can only attend to present papers if the conference is during my holidays!

@Fatimah, you are lucky. You seem to have all the 'appropriate, pertinent and/or relevant articles'. Congrats.

My dear @Miranda, as You ask me for some readings, I will attach a link to an article :"Timed Essays: Top 5 Tips for Writing Academic Papers Under Pressure"! I do think that You are under pressure, not able to multitasking...! Here it is!

Of course, many different factors imply different time spent for writing.

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/academic1/timed-essays-top-5-tips-for-writing-academic-essays-under-pressure/

Dear Miranda, this metafilter thread has some tips on overcoming the problem you mention in the question:

http://ask.metafilter.com/47427/Academic-writers-block

Time required to write a paper depends on the length required. Typically for a 6p paper conference one week should be good enough. It will also depend upon the free time available to you to write in a day. Probably this will also depend upon your experience in writing. More experienced you are likely to take less time. The actual time is in getting the data and analysis part of the paper. That will take much more time than the actual part. Also your discipline in developing the paper approach would help. I keep notes regularly for all the activities related to the paper writing, so that when the crunch time comes I can use those small bits of information to assemble into a paper. More practice writing papers is required for your colleagues. I think you should ask them to start writing without thinking too much, and then refine that as required.

The purpose of research is to increase the store of human knowledge, and so even the very best work is useless if you cannot effectively communicate it to the rest of the world. Additionally, writing papers and giving talks will clarify your thinking and thereby improve your research.

Is very important to find the necessary time to write.

Write in brief daily sessions, prewrite, use index cards, don't worry about page, write the paper you want, then cut it down to size. Plan a revision session in which your only goal is to cut.

A very good question, but there are no universal answers that how much time it takes to write a paper for a journal or a conference. Well, in my case it is a continuous process, many writable topics are always in pipeline semi-finished, only when the deadline of submission approaches near, does our team gets into action.

I always feel research is a team work and every contributor to the research must also be given credit into the paper, so the time taken by each one often leads to avoidable delays.

As I have often observed, that after a long period of inactivity, if we take up a paper for submission to a journal which could publish my paper, then hectic week follows and in consultations with my co-authors, a final version is decided, then all the co-authors are given a 4-5 days to check the paper for errors or typos etc. and then final submission.

As with every author, not every work gets the editorial approval, so the same process is repeated again and again till it get published, which may even take years.

@Profs Ljubomir, Artur, Nageswara, Rolando and K Singh: thanks for great advice. It's not just the writing that's going 'haltingly'. I'm sad that I can't attend conferences outside the holiday period (5 weeks a year). And you will laugh that I have found only 2 journals for my work: JSSH and Learning Science and Maths Online. It's true, if you check my contributions on RG..... Do you know of journals that we don't need to pay in my field, science education?

Hi Miranda,

I think that depends on what conference or what kind of article it is, your familiarity with the data and whether or not you know how you're going to frame the story around the data. I've written abstracts for conferences in 1-2 days, but I've also spent +8 months writing a paper.

For me the pitfalls are usually word limits/character max. Sometimes you feel pleased with everything you have written, and then you realize that you're over the limit and have to trim the text. This is particularly hard for me to do. Luckily, my advisor is pretty good at this and she is helpful when it comes to writing.

Dear Miranda,

Generally, one does not write papers for conferences or journals. One carries out investigations because of spiritual, scientific or societal interests and try to publish the results without determined earlier where to publish them.

I think when writing a manuscript one should do his/her best. The standard is always the author himself/herself.

As to the details of manuscript writings journal and conference proceeding editors generally fix their demands. I should note that in case of some conferences standard is not too high. However, regarding if the author establishes his/her own standard, he/she should be satisfied with the output.

@K. M. Singh, that's true. It is difficult to quantify however, after having all required data sets as says @Nageswara Rao Posinasetti, for a conference paper of 6-10 pages I take 4-5 nights instead of days because one has to be focused for such writing and during day time it is difficult to achieve. Of course pitfalls are the same as finds @Millie Rincón-Cortés.

I agree with you: a week is usually enough for article writing. I wirte draft, and return to it after day-two with new ideas and corrections, and once more. Change of activity and break may be really useful. But research before article writing may last even several months or more :)

Dear Nageswara: I fully agree with the approach you adopt. Thanks for sharing; this can be very helpful to young scholars, who are beginning to learn a more sustainable way of paper writing. This is also very systematic. It saves one from doing the same things again and again when you attempt writing another paper, as you are maintaining a data base of your small bits of information. This, I believe, also includes old and new references.

Dear Miranda,

what about RG as a way to publish about education without additional expenses? In other words, should novel knowledge published for the first time not be published in RG, and if you think not, why not?

I agree with most what already have been said! The time needed to prepare for a conference presentation varies due to several factors including the type of conference, time allocated for the talk, topic, ...

Most of the items are covered by others in the thread. However, there are few things I would like to address. a. What stage of your career you're in? How significant the result is - is it a breakthrough finding or just like any other research findings? How competitive the field that you're in? In addition to all the factors that are addressed here, the above factors also play as a deciding factor.

Normally you could write an abstract in a day or two.

The nature of paper that you want to write characterize how much time that it would take. Do you have all the key references ready? Are you writing an 'evidence-based' paper, a meta analysis, what is your selection criteria for including certain papers or excluding certain papers, etc. Gathering adequate literature might take some time.

Then you have to decide if you're writing alone or with others? What their expertise is? Is someone good in Stats? Is someone good in English? is someone with good background in scientific aspects and technical aspects? All these factors play a crucial role in deciding how much time it would take to complete a manuscript.

Rejected manuscripts, usually take a bit longer to resubmit to other journals for various reasons. a. your priority changes; b. need to fix reviewers comments; c. additional data or analysis might require; d. reformatting; e. negotiating with potential journal editor or identifying appropriate journals.

Some manuscript sit on your table for a long time. The more you delay, more literature searches required.

Sometimes, we purposely leave the manuscript for few days, and revisit. You will get a different perspectives and identify many mistakes with your fresh look. Getting help from our own team and other experts that we know would also help to get the manuscript to a higher standard.

Many of the investigators have two major pitfalls:

a. time management (doesn't know how to prioritize the task)

b. lack of multitasking (procrastination and eventually give up)

Especially, the junior investigators should nurture these skills if they want to establish quickly in their career.

I do not feel writing is difficult for me. Having a good idea and actually doing the work takes much longer.

If it is new work which is quite distinct from my other work, writing it up takes more time.

I also find that my PhD students take mcuh longer time to write. The most difficult part seem the introduction and literature review.

I agree with Emilia.

In addition there are some factors affect on the time consumed for writing an article.

Time to prepare a lecture or an article depends largely on the information available and the target. For an article must have basic information on the subject, clear methods, results analyzed and its interpretation discussed sufficiently so to answer the research questions. Done this we must prepare a draft, peer review it and then submit it for consideration by a scientific committee. These, as the case of the forum or medium, used in a manner the time required to approve or reject the item. Generally consider that an article implies much longer than a conference.

As the discussion converges to say that it depends on a variety of factors . These may include :

a) Quality of conference/journal

b) Strength of your idea/algorithm

c) Resources at your disposal(especially for experimental or empirical work

d) professional pressures for tenureship etc.

e) quality of your peers/students who are contributing as joint authors

Lately, I have not participated in conferences. For journals, I usually need 30-60 days to finish an article. But this can vary greatly.

An article published in 2012 took a total time of 60 days to be ready. However, between the initial idea and the starting point of article writing four years have passed.

Thanks for your views. And for sharing your experiences.

@Marcel, I wonder if RG wants to be a publishing house at all. Perhaps they already are very busy, without the extra duties. Other RG members have asked on this issue including Prof Alex Babchin.

I will just do my best and pay some attention to Pareto principle. I also wish you all the best in your researching and writing.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/So_far_in_your_research_do_you_observe_the_Pareto_Principle_at_work_is_this_Pareto_ratio_accurate

If it's a desktop study, this can range from one to three weeks, say, 20 h/week.

The items that are the most limiting are: 1) Deciding on the topic, 2) Finding the appropriate references.

Thanks @Ahed, @David for your views.

For several days, I turned off my 4G device for many hours, and worked on a paper. It's almost ready. I have to print it out tomorrow and check a hard copy, although I have checked the softcopy. Just 13 pages, and 3 diagrams, and no frills.

Miranda,, broad variability! My personal range for writing articles has been three months to several years from concept to completion. For my dissertation, given the review process and defense, a paper based on my topic (not the direct data) was published 6 years later, following three presentations at national conferences, progressing for a poster presentation to a seminar. An editor in the seminar audience encouraged me to draft an article based on my seminar and submit it. Some case studies I published (3) required 6 months to 2 years to collect the data, another 6 months each to write and submit to journals. My last state-level 90- minute seminar, was based on three years of data, 3 months to update the literature review and two months to fine tune, in between my other university responsibilities.

Dear Miranda,

Thanks for sharing the important question and I fell sorry for not responding you faster due to my temporary inactivity in RG for a while for some other reasons.

My friends and fellow experts have answered extensively and critically to your question and like most of them mentioned I also feel that writing a paper for a conference and for a journal deserve significant time and journal papers usually take longer than the conference paper.

When we do research in the lab in multiple projects the total picture of individual projects net finding do not become very clear until and unless a first draft for the paper is written. When every thing is at place depending upon further refinement, more experiments etc may be needed depending upon the concerned journal's requirement or to logically establish the point with more possible evidence and that takes significant amount of time.

Unavailability of resources, back ordered fine chemicals, restricted experimental skills in specific areas and a bad coordination between contributing authors significantly slow down the entire process.

Regards,

Thanks for your views.

@Nola, I like your phrase: 'several years from concept to completion'. When I was a student, I invented mnemonic strategies to enable recall. It's indeed many years since then till I saw my 1st paper on mnemonics. But in a way it was good, other people published work on mnemonics and I have sufficient literature review.

@Amritlal et al., I have felt keenly 'Unavailability of resources'. Thankfully, there are some fine caring friends on RG who have provided assistance.

@Saleem, sorry there was a downvote on your post. It could be put by someone who never makes mistakes at all, and that's not me, because I'm a human who may err.

It depends, for example, one of our collaborative research (actual investigations and data collection) took three years to complete the field study, took one year (data analysis, data interpretation and write up and comments from research scientists) and took one year to publish in a Journal

Thanks Golam. I have experienced that, it's like PhD research and thesis writing!

It depends on the paper length and nature (short communication, research paper, invited paper, normal paper.... ). Generally if the material is available (knowledge compilation, experiments, discussions, data, ....) and the subject well mastered, it could vary between 1 week to 4 weeks.

Thanks Fairouz and Mario, sorry for late response. For 1 project, my co-worker in Spain had some problems, but he continue to do some more work in September.

For another project, I also had some problems, so I will do need to a better job, with the ideas from new articles that I am reviewing now.

My decision to attend a conference depends on my materialistic possibilities. If I have this possibility, I make preparations - summarize my experience, data, creative products. I have piles of interesting ideas, conspectus, plans, scientific articles, results of experiments. I make up a plan, then a presentation. I do it very fast, every night, every free minute, because I'm full of inspiration.I return to my article a lot of times.The process of polishing is exciting. I don't like to write references- it takes a lot of time, responsibility and attention.If I'm preparing for a lecture, I take into account only presentation and illustrative materials. As a rule, I communicate with adult audience in the form of dialogue, without any papers.

Great @Irina. Thanks. I like:

' do it very fast, every night, every free minute, because I'm full of inspiration.I return to my article a lot of times.The process of polishing is exciting. '

Wonderful encouragement for all of us from Prof Kamal. Thanks very much. I have sent off 2 papers to 2 different journals. Now I work hard on 2 more papers that are related. Already collected and analyzed data.

Miranda,

You and I are opposites.  I have the most difficulty in establishing my study. The ease of writing is dependent upon my time for establishing a study, going through the Human Subjects Review Process and conducting the study and whether or not I have assistance and/or release time to really devote myself to framing the study.  But depending on the complexity of the topic, it has taken me anywhere from 3 months to 3 years to publish an article or book.  In terms of presentations, typically 3 to 6 months, from the drafting and response to the initial call for papers, acceptance and several rewrites/revisits prior to presentation. 

Thanks dear Nola and Mario.  The time seems to vary a lot for each of us, and also on the type of article that we are writing.  That's what I glean from the posts here.  

For me, I happen to be in a place where few people have much motivation to do research, even action research.  So I have a large field to select whatever is interesting and feasible.  The need to do research ls always present, the condition of my students require research on their learning.  But I need to get the 'reasons' from literature review.  That is such a challenge because (without the contribution from my helpful friends) I have free papers and abstracts.

Miranda, I do understand.  The opposite of too few motivated to do research is an abundance of writers with competition having an influence on whether helpful collaborations emerge around topics of importance.  

Do not forget, the language barrier may be a reason for writing a long-time article! In addition, there are researchers who are not inclined to write  and publish their results, so their associates appear as co-authors, sometimes even without contribution! Such people do a very quick article writing !!!

Dear Profs and friends, Nola, Ljubomir, even though I can write well and easily, I have many problems finding the articles for review.  The free articles may not even coincide with my research needs; so I just have abstracts.  Many abstracts report very briefly.  So when I need to read full results, discussions, conclusions, I ask kind friends for a few papers.  Even to determine research questions, I need to read from review to find out what is currently considered important.  

So it may take me a year to have a paper published.  At times, it takes about 6 months.  And I work on a few papers in the same year.  My deputy director calls it 'passion'; people with passion have more intrinsic motivation, and have more job satisfaction, and are generally happier (he said).

A good scientifics paper for a standard journal may be restricted to 8-10 pages in general.

Following!

I am about to ghost-write in an academic (post-doc) context. The issue remains: how much should I quote for my deliverables? In some cases, I will be conceptualizing, constructing, submitting for review and implementing requested modifications. In other cases, I will be working with Masters and Doctoral students - formatting and improving layout, language-use and referencing styles in accordance with journal and conference requirements. How do I formulate piecemeal costs for this 'beast' of a project?

I agree with what everyone said. I can say something around 6-8 months for me (writing and rewriting after reviewing the co-authors). for me to write articles is as would say bilbo bagins "there and back again".