Sometimes a submitted article stays in the editorial board before the reviewer's agreement. What is the meantime? what are the factors behind the long-time manuscripts stay before review?
Dear Hyder Mirghani Sometimes a manuscript stayed queued for review because of busy schedule of subject editor. This mostly happens with journals of professional society. This is my personal observation.
Thanks!
Mean time might be one to three months. Long time MS stay might be due to non-availability of suitable reviewer or negligence on the part of the Editor.
The mean gestation period for papers is 9 months. For Maths papers, you may wait 2 years. The main problem is that reviewers are not paid, so reviewing work goes to the bottom of the to-do list. Nevertheless, follow up after a month to make sure that the paper is not lost in transmission.
Hyder - wait times, between different journals and even within the same journal, are highly variable and depends on a number of factors. Change of editors, editorial board members, administration staff etc can have quite an impact. Attracting reviewers is another hurdle, as Ian suggests, and then it depends on how many reviewers are needed. Let's say that three reviewers are required - and two respond quickly. Editors will still often not release reviews until all reviews are in. It can be a bit of a 'lottery' i.e. one manuscript is returned within a few months in a particular journal - and another manuscript may take 3-4 times longer. I currently have one submitted article that has been in review for 8 months. The journal states that it aims to return within 90 days. I have contacted their administration twice - and they have not got back to me. I wouldn't mind so much if they did and stated the reason for delay. I probably would not submit to that journal again - and this is my first submission to that journal.
I had a paper that was under review for a year once. Every 90 days I would inquire and they would reply that they were having trouble finding qualified reviewers (it was an out-of-the-ordinary topic).
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