OK, but I've never had a paper turned around in less than 6 months (and often it has taken up to a year) at any journal except the QJE. Also, you can't divide time to publish by 3 since most of the time there is only 1 revise and resubmit and in my experience more papers are accepted on the first submission than go for two revise and resubmits. Also in my experience (and that of my friends) the top journal s are the worst for turn around. Econometrica kept one paper of mine for 14 months. A friend had a paper go three rounds at AER and that took 3 years. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of bad papers get rejected quickly and that would bring down the average turn around time a lot. But that is irrelevant if you are submitting a good paper that is eventually going to be published. Then you care about the time to publish and its disgraceful at nearly all economics journals. - - Bill Dickens
William T. Dickens The Brookings Institution 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036 Phone: (202) 797-6113 FAX: (202) 797-6181 E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] AOL IM: wtdickens >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/15/02 12:00AM >>> My original statement was not about about time to publication, but "turn around" time - ie, the time it takes to return a manuscript to author with referee comments. I opined that "turn around" time for well staffed journals was in the 3-6 month range for the faster social sciences, but much longer for other fields. As another poster noted, if you assume that accepted papers need at least 1 revision, you should multiply that by 3 and then you get the numbers cited in an earlier post - minimum 18 months. This was my estimate for the top journals, which get money for staff. Smaller journals have less money, which translates into a tired editor with grad student assistant, resulting in longer turn around times. Your experience of 14 months for a psych journal is in fact normal, and much better than fields like history, math or literary studies. Perhaps the absolute fastest is experimental physics, where claims of first discovery matter, and stuff is rushed to print in a month or two. Once you work in journal publishing, you soon realize how friggin' hard it is to get stuff reviewed and then 14 months to publication (or even two years) starts to seem reasonable. Fabio > I wouldn't if I were you. My submission to Psych Review with a revision > took 14 months from submission till it appeared in print. I've never > made it into print in a refereed economics journal in less than 18 > months and more typical times are 2 to 3 year. Oh yes. And the editor of > Psych Review was profusely apologetic for the refereeing taking so long! > - - Bill
