After boring a reviewer to death (literally) and having forgotten all about the paper, I have hit 3 years, but 5... Wow ! I think it is pretty bad practice for journals to 'stockpile' contributions and after 5 years, what might have been a worthwhile piece of work could become dated. I have always pretty much had my work published within 6 months- 1 year (& never paid), so I cannot imagine the situation you describe. Thankfully though, I don't think it's the norm :-D

5 years? Are you serious? Could you provide more info re the article and journal? Obviously, such a delay is unacceptable. The longest I ever had to wait was probably 6 months after final acceptance (that is the time to the article appearing in the print issue). The accepted draft may have been available already at an earlier stage.

Dear Markus,

Please find the article here. Thanks a lot.

DOI: 10.1142/S021797921250213X

Received: 6 September 2006; Accepted: 26 February 2008; Published: 12 December 2012

Always check the accepted dates of articles against the issue publication date of the journal you are targetting to submit to. This will give you an indicator of the journals pub lag times. It's a handy tip!

With so much advancement in Information Technology (IT), it is now possible to reduce the time from acceptance to publication. As such many journals are publishing ahead of print.

Publishing ahead of print is not always considered as final version of record, A&I services tend not to index articles until they are allocated a volume and issue number. Getting to the final VOR is often the priority for authors.

I believe we want our publication not to get delayed presuming its significance in the current research and making sure it is available for others interested in that particular topic to read and to cite the paper.

In such cases even if the paper is ahead of print it can be read at least abstract and can be cited thanks to DOI (cross ref) services these days

Five years is a lot, indeed: my 'record' is also not far from it: I sent my paper to a journal in autumn 2009 and it will come out before summer 2014... fortunately, they allowed me to update it this year. I asked why it will take so much time: they told that they got so many good papers that they did not wish to reject them, and thus I would have to wait... but 5 years is crazy, indeed!

Tiia - I think that 5 years is actualy irresponsible on the part of the journal. Ok, journals have a business interest but this is built on the back of a need for a mechanism of dissemination for the latest thought and findings .... a bit like the way the professions of doctors and nurses are built on the back of a societal need for healthcare - the good services rely on those who keep in touch with their raison d'etre ;-)

We should understand that post acceptance, we must not hurry a publication as this may lead to errors.

I would prefer a faster peer review not more than 2 months and post acceptance 2 months to get a paper published in traditional journals.

But then many journal publish papers half yearly, quart-yearly: these journals have many pending papers so take more time.

Bimonthly journals/monthly publishers take comparatively less time

many online journals these days publish almost within a week after acceptance

Ramana - if by 'post acceptance' you mean acceptance of the finalized paper, then how can errors occur if the paper is no longer subject to change? Different journals have different timeframes, but the simple acceptance and 'stockpiling' of peoples work is not a good practice.

What is the maximum paper one can publish in a year

Emeka: I take it you mean the capacity of a journal?  I have no idea how each issue is regulated & paid for ..., however it also asks another (slightly superfluous) question - how many articles can any author produce in a given year?

quality a journal has on editorial board would be deciding factor