<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=iso-8859-1"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On 2013-09-13, at 7:20 AM, David Solomon <<a href="mailto:dsolomon@msu.edu">dsolomon@msu.edu</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div>We have made the data available for the paper: "The publishing delay in scholarly peer-reviewed</div></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div>journals" by Bo-Christer Björk & David Solomon recently accepted for publication in </div></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div><i>Journal of Informetrics</i>. </div></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div>Paper <a href="http://tinyurl.com/ms5dk2u">http://tinyurl.com/ms5dk2u</a></div><div>Codebook <a href="http://tinyurl.com/m2fwxtk">http://tinyurl.com/m2fwxtk</a> </div><div>Data <a href="http://tinyurl.com/mslr3c7">http://tinyurl.com/mslr3c7</a></div><div><br></div><div><b>Abstract: </b>Publishing in scholarly peer reviewed journals usually entails long delays from</div></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div>submission to publication. In part this is due to the length of the peer review process and</div></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div>in part because of the dominating tradition of publication in issues, earlier a necessity of</div></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div>paper-based publishing, which creates backlogs of manuscripts waiting in line. The delays</div></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div>slow the dissemination of scholarship and can provide a significant burden on the academic</div></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div>careers of authors.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Using a stratified random sample we studied average publishing delays in 2700 papers</div></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div>published in 135 journals sampled from the Scopus citation index. The shortest overall</div></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div>delays occur in science technology and medical (STM) fields and the longest in social</div></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div>science, arts/humanities and business/economics. Business/economics with a delay of 18</div></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div>months took twice as long as chemistry with a 9 month average delay. Analysis of the</div></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div>variance indicated that by far the largest amount of variance in the time between submission</div></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div>and acceptance was among articles within a journal as compared with journals, disciplines</div></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div>or the size of the journal. For the time between acceptance and publication most of the variation</div></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div>in delay can be accounted for by differences between specific journals. </div></div></blockquote><br></div><div>Now it's time to put two and two together (and this pertains more to the lag between </div><div>acceptance and publication: the timing of peer review and revision is another matter):</div><div><br></div><blockquote style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;"><div>1. The research community is clamoring for access, particularly those who are denied</div><div>access to articles in journals to which their institutions cannot afford to subscribe.</div><div><br></div><div>2. In many fields, the most important growth region for taking up and building upon new</div><div>findings, hence research progress, is within the first year of publication.</div><div><br></div><div>3. The average delay from acceptance to publication for subscription journals is about</div><div>6 months (and especially long for arts & humanities journals)</div><div><br></div><div>4. Björk and Solomon point out that for Gold OA journals the delay is much shorter:</div><div>under 2 months.</div><div><br></div><div>5. The delay for Green OA self-archiving is even shorter: zero if self-archiving</div><div>is immediate (and even negative if a pre-refereeing preprint has also been made</div><div>OA even earlier).</div><div><br></div><div>6. Subscription journals say they are in favor of OA, but they need an embargo in order </div><div>to keep their subscriptions sustainable.</div><div><br></div><div>7. Subscription journals already have a built-in "embargo" because of the 6-month</div><div>delay between acceptance and publication.</div><div><br></div><div>8. So the 6-12-month Green OA embargoes demanded by STEM fields and even </div><div>longer embargoes demanded by arts & humanities journals not only impedes research </div><div>progress by denying access during the embargo, but <i>they compound the publisher-end</i></div><div><i>delays between acceptance and publication.</i></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>This is why the <a href="http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/853-guid.html">Liege-model immediate-deposit mandate</a> ( together with the </div><div><a href="https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/RequestCopy">repository-mediated copy-request Button</a>) -- now recommended by</div><div>both <a href="http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/987-The-UKs-New-HEFCEREF-OA-Mandate-Proposal.html">HEFCE</a> and <a href="http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1040-UK-BIS-Committee-2013-Report-on-Open-Access.html">BIS</a> -- is so important:</div><div><br></div><div>It makes it possible for researchers to request -- and authors to provide -- immediate</div><div>access with one click each as soon as the final, refereed, revised draft is accepted for </div><div>publication, irrespective of publication lags or publisher OA embargoes.</div><div><br></div><div><b>Stevan Harnad</b></div><div><br></div></body></html>