Characteristics of Publication Delays Over the Period 2000–2016

With the emergence of electronic publishing, the open access model, and the use of social media, the study of the publishing process in scholarly peer-reviewed journals has acquired importance as a research topic. However, these studies are based on relatively small samples of publications. In this study, the publications between 2000 and 2016 in Elsevier journals are used to analyze the characteristics of the publication process at the level of disciplines, journals, and publishing model. Over the period, the work on the technical aspects of the publication process was substantially expedited. Although it was reduced for disciplines with the longest editorial delays, the peer review of publications remains the most time-consuming element and 100 days seems to be, on an average, the minimum for this element of the publication process.