Publishing Fast and Slow: A Review of Publishing Speed in the Last Decade

This article explores a journal’s turnaround time (TAT) trends across ten of the largest publishers that, as of 2020, accounted for more than 2/3 of all journal papers. It utilizes the timestamps of articles that were published in the period 2011/12 compared to the period 2019/20. The author explains why publishing speed matters to authors and why the production stage and the peer review have become faster in the last 10 years. The author concludes that slowing down is evitable and points out an example showing it is possible to have high editorial standards and be fast at the same time.