I already received email for three different papers, where the authors complain about the too long publication time, and in particular the fact that no one answers them from SciPost and is no idea when the papers will be published.
I think SciPost should clearly write down somewhere what the current time frame is for publishing a paper and the various phases: average time for refereeing, voting, and publishing.
So authors can clearly choose whether or not to submit their papers to SciPost.
This page with average times could be updated every two months or something similar.
there are 44 papers in the “voting in preparation” queue and only 3 papers in the voting stage itself; this “preparation” thing should be quick, I would be happy to take care of that myself, we discussed this at the last meeting; I also note there are 24 papers that have been submitted but are still waiting for “plagiarism checks”; some of these have been submitted more than two months ago; this is also an administrative step that should be quick.
I have two papers that were accepted (many) weeks ago and still not published. From the outside, it looks like SciPost has issues with its basic workflow.
I was also extremely surprised to realize that some accepted articles have been waiting to be published for months (frankly, I was not familiar with the concept of “publishing queue” altogether, especially once the proofs have already been produced and approved – it’s not clear to me what else is left to do).
I am genuinely sorry, because I really believe in this project and it seems to me that every other aspect of this journal is very professional. But as a young researcher, these delays can be damaging, and make me less enthusiast about choosing SciPost again in the future.
I complained several times to SciPost administrators for (what I think is) a similar issue. My last paper that has been submitted to SciPost has been submitted more than a month ago, and there is not even an editor assigned. I don’t see why this is not something that could be done quickly. Note that I have also asked SciPost administrators several times about what was happening, if there was any issue, and I didn’t get even an answer. I don’t know what to do at this stage.
I would love to submit more papers to SciPost, but this kind of situation is really annoying.