Dear All,
I am very curious about the life cycle of manuscripts in online
journals these days. I have been doing some numbers on PLOS One, which
advertises as the journal "accelerating the publication of peer-reviewed"
science. However, a quick look at the papers that have been published in the
past few months reveals most of these were accepted 5-9 months after
submission. What strikes me as odd is that PLOS One gives you two weeks to
review a manuscript, and they start pestering you with reminders even before
the review is late...and may you not be late for 48 hours! So how does a
journal that expects such a fast turnaround from peer reviewers deal with
authors at such glacial pace? To begin with, it is not as if publication comes
cheap in this journal. Should 1250 USD not include a bit of expediency? The
numbers here seem odd. We have had a paper stuck in limbo since November 2015
without a final answer yet, supposedly because they cannot find an editor (out
of > 6000) who can manage the revised version of the paper.
So the key question is, I suppose: Is this seemingly epic sluggishness the norm
in open access/online publication these days?
At this point, I am not really convinced PLOS One should be advertising as "the
fast one"...or is it?
Any thoughts?
Edwin
=================
Dr. Edwin Cruz-Rivera
Visiting Associate Professor
Department of Biological Sciences
University of the Virgin Islands
#2 John Brewers Bay
St. Thomas 00802
USVI
Tel: 1-340-693-1235
Fax: 1-340-693-1385
"It is not the same to hear the devil as to see him coming your way"
(Puerto Rican proverb)
