Pandemic Publishing: Medical journals drastically speed up their publication process for Covid-19

Serge P.J.M. Horbach

Several studies have previously aimed to assess the typical duration of journals' publication process (Lin, Hou, & Wu, 2016; Tosi, 2009 ). In their analyses, researchers commonly distinguish two stages of this process: the review stage (i.e. the stage between article submission and formal acceptance) and the editorial stage (i.e. the stage between acceptance and final publication, either online or in print). In a meta-analysis including over 2700 journal articles, Björk and Solomon (2013) find considerable differences in turnaround times (i.e. the period between submission and publication of a journal article, sometimes also called 'publication delays') between research disciplines. For biomedical journals, they find an average duration of the review stage of just over four months, while the editorial stage takes on average about five months. Clearly, such turnaround times are highly undesirable in light of the current health crisis.