In this edition of Blog Buzz, a great post sent me down a fascinating rabbit hole. Here we go!

Upon noticing a long delay between acceptance and publication of his paper in PLoS Computation Biology, Daniel Himmelstien analyzed the PLoS journal family for similar delays and found some notable patterns which are represented with great visuals in his post Publication delays at PLOS and 3,475 other Journals. He then looked at delays in 16 open access publications both in his field and in journals indexed in PubMed with usable data. In closing, he suggests a Yelp-type review site for publications in order to help authors make informed choices about where to publish.

There is a lively discussion in the comments, including similar studies focused on other disciplines (check out lags in Cell Biology Journals, for example), responses from people who have launched journal review sites, and more,  .

If you are an author interested in average publication times in particular journals or looking for journals in your field for potential publication, the MSK Library can help you find what you need with tools like PubsHub and JANE (learn more in previous posts about these resources here and here). Reach out to our Reference Team for help!