How can you speed up the subtly related processes (submission/review/acceptance/publication) of publishing an article? What is the rate-determining (slowest) step?
When you send a good article to a good Journal you receive good publication service.
Very good work and very poor work gets the response quick. Papers on the borderline, goes for the 3rd reviewer and takes long time for review. Just hope the papers go to young reviewers and not old professors who are mostly engaged in administration and traveling.
Sometimes, the 'guilty party' causing the 'slowest stage' is actually the author: I have been a reviewer in several indexed journals, and I have sent my reviews usually in less than a week, while I have had to wait for the authors' new versions for months. In some journals, it also take several months to get an accepted paper published (fortunately, many journals make online versions public months before they publish them in print).
Thank you all, Teodoro, Bankim, Ganesh, Oommen, and Tiia for your answers. It seems now that mostly the review process is the rate-determining step, regardless actually of the quality of the paper (if to be reviewed by many referees). I have been invited to review a number of journal papers and mostly they don't take me more than few days, (given my academic duties as a graduate student are much flexible than those of a professor). To mention, it happened a lot that my supervisor asked me to help review some of the papers whom he is invited to review, sometimes if he is busy.
Thank you again.
The time for soliciting reviews and the time allowed for reviews are major factors. It goes faster if the editor solicits multiple reviewers upon receiving the article. If the process goes through one editor only that also saves time. In contrast, if the manuscript passes through an editorial board and then up the editorial hierarchy, it adds time. If the journal accepts all formats for references, tables, and figures, that can save time for the author. If the journal publishes the article as soon as it is accepted, giving it page numbers that follow the last accepted article, rather than arranging the papers for each issue according to an editor's selection, that also saves time.
Mostly it depends on publisher/Editors. For speedy publications choose open access journals
Dear @Faysal, I find this blog by my colleague relevant to your thread.
What happens to an article after it has been submitted to a journal?
"A couple of weeks ago, I did a workshop with a group of doctoral students in which we talked about academic publishing. One of the themes that came up in the discussion is that many of them felt reasonably confident when it came to writing about their research, but were apprehensive about whatever happens after the article is submitted. The reasons, it seems, were because this aspect of publishing is out of the authors’ control, but also because the process through which articles are selected for publication is rather opaque. Prompted by this, I have put together some information about what happens to articles after they have been submitted to a journal for consideration .
The post is organised in four sections, which will provide you with information on:
https://achilleaskostoulas.com/2018/06/01/what-happens-to-an-article-after-it-has-been-submitted-to-a-journal/
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