Analysis of temporal characteristics of the editorial processing in scientific periodicals

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the timing characteristics of editorial processes in scientific journals, identifying typical waiting time distributions and developing a model to simulate different editorial scenarios, providing insights into peer-review durations.

Contribution

It introduces a new model of editorial processing and characterizes typical waiting time distributions based on empirical data from multiple journals.

Findings

Identified typical waiting time distributions for manuscript processing.

Developed a model simulating various editorial scenarios.

Provided insights into the peer-review contribution to publication timelines.

Abstract

The first part of our work is connected with the analysis of typical random variables for the specific human-initiated process. We study the data characterizing editorial work with received manuscripts in several scientific journals. In such a way we found the waiting time distributions that could be called the typical for an ordinary peer-review scientific journal. In the second part of this study a model of editorial processing of received manuscripts is developed. Within the model, different scenarios of the manuscript editorial processing are examined. Combining the results of the quantitative experiment and model simulations we arrive to the set of conclusions about time characteristics of editorial process in scientific journals and a peer-review contribution.