Journal turnaround 12 months for first review

[Hibush]

There are a lot of changes in the academic publishing world. Getting reviewers is harder, so having an editor who can cultivate a large group of responsive reviewers is important. Some journals don't realize that and end up with long review times. As others have noted, having editors who can make editorial decisions helps a great deal. In particular desk rejecting stuff that reviewers don't want to waste their time on. But also clearly stating which revisions suggested by reviewers actually need to be addressed.

Academics need to get fast turnaround on manuscripts as well. We don't sit in our ivory towers puffing on our pipes and musing until the reviews come back. Journals need to respect that.

Unfortunately journals run by senior academics have been some of the slowest to recognize these market forces. That has created a big opening for highly responsive but minimally rigorous journals. It would be best for academic publishing to get fast turnarounds (whether rejections or helpful peer reviews) from the journals that have a mission to serve their academic discipline.

[Sun_Worshiper]

I dunno about you guys, but for us, average time to review has declined substantially over the last fifteen years. It used to be that you could expect six months or more practically everywhere, but now three months is the maximum at most journals (with many much faster, and a few much slower). It's not because there are more philosophers out there, or because submission volumes are lower (they're a lot higher).

I don't know what explains it, but I suspect it's just a cultural shift. More of us are just completing our reports sooner. Which isn't hard; really, when you sit down to do it, for most stuff (not logic or math!) it's just a matter of a couple of hours to read it and a couple more to write the report. I complete pretty much all my reports within a week.

Yes, the norm in my field is about two months. Things seem to be moving more slowly lately though. I suspect this is some kind of hang-over from Covid - people were saying no because they were tied up with childcare or whatever, and they decided to just keep declining after things got back to normal.

Anyway, as you said above, best approach is to have lots of papers in motion so that delays on any one review don't matter so much.

[foralurker]

Thanks, everyone! I always appreciate the advice and encouragement here.