Too long time betwee acceptance and publication

Dear all

ave received several complaints from some authors about the time it takes from acceptance of a paper to its actual publication.
I understand that there may be some technical difficulties, I think perhaps you could change the acceptance message by clearly stating what the average technical time for publication will be after acceptance.
Or if it is possible to publish the pre-proof version and then upgrade it.
(some journal does like this by publishing the pre-proof with a DOI)

best
Claudio

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yes, this is a major issue, due to staff shortage, I presume; it’s not just the time between acceptance and publication that is so long, also the time between a decision by the editor in charge and the acceptance can be several months; for example, at this moment there are papers that have been in the “voting in preparation queue” for two months. This surprises me because I presume that to clear this particular queue is a minor administrative action. Then there are papers that have accumulated the necessary number of votes to be accepted, and still stay in the voting queue for many weeks.

All of this frustrates me to no end.

3 Likes

Another thing that would help is if editors-in-charge would reply to inquiries on the status of the submission, even if just to explain that it is going to take long and hopefully offering some justification for that. My editor stopped replying altogether. Frankly this is not very professional.

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Dear All,

Same here. Manuscript accepted on October 14, 2024; publication offer accepted 4 days later.

Since then nothing. Zero. Even my replies to the two referees who took a time to write useful reviews, are not yet vetted after two months in spite of the acceptance!

I sent a message in November and another in December to ask if I should do something to at least get my replies vetted. But to no avail.

In the meantime, I see other manuscripts accepted well after mine, getting published.

I am happy to help, provide assistance if necessary but letting the authors completely in the dark and their manuscript in the limbos is an indicator of issues that need to be addressed urgently either at the level of the Editor in charge or at the level of production.

Sincerely,

Henni