db = FileAttachment("../../_data/submissions_public.json").json()
COL = ({ accept: "#6b1b1b", reject: "#2e8bb0", desk_reject: "#c98a2b", in_principle_accept: "#4c7a4c", withdrawn: "#9a8aa8" })
dcol = d => COL[d] || "#9aa0a6"
accepted = db.accepted.map((a, i) => {
const pub = a.pub_date ? new Date(a.pub_date) : null; // first online (advance access)
const pubfinal = a.pub_date_final ? new Date(a.pub_date_final) : null; // final journal issue (version of record)
const vor = pubfinal || (a.awaiting_issue ? null : pub); // awaiting an issue → no VoR yet
const sameVoR = !pubfinal || (pub && +pubfinal === +pub); // online-only / same-day → one dot
const labelYear = (a.awaiting_issue && !pubfinal) ? "TBD"
: pubfinal ? pubfinal.getUTCFullYear() : (a.year ? a.year : "(in press)");
return {
...a, i,
acc: new Date(a.accept_date),
pub, pubfinal, vor, sameVoR,
vorDate: a.pub_date_final || a.pub_date,
fsub: a.first_sub_date ? new Date(a.first_sub_date) : null,
ipa: a.ipa_date ? new Date(a.ipa_date) : null,
label: (a.registered_report ? "✱ " : "")
+ `${a.authors} ${labelYear} · ${a.journal}`
+ (a.timing_known ? ` · ${a.rr_missing ? "R&R ?" : a.total_rr + " R&R"}` : "")
};
})What it actually takes to publish a paper
publishing
transparency
graduate students
data viz
I put my entire journal publication record online — and what it shows about the hidden time in publishing, and about aiming (or not) for the top-tier journal.
I just added something to my website I’ve wanted to share for a while: an interactive Publication Record — every accepted paper, how long it spent under review, how many journals it passed through, and how long the whole road to publication took.
The inspiration is Yusaku Horiuchi, who has generously shared a complete log of his own journal interactions publicly. I wanted to build on that with a few addition I think matter, especially for graduate students.
The whole clock, not just the review clock
My chart shows the whole elapsed time — not just the months a paper was under review.
When we talk about how long publishing takes, we usually count the time a manuscript sits with reviewers. That heuristic often massively understates the total time to publish a manuscript. A huge share of the calendar is the paper not under review at all.. First, there is the time a manuscript sits on my desk while I (and coauthors) revise an R&R. Second, revisions also often need to occur between one journal’s rejection and the next updated submission, which can often take months. Third, there the wait from acceptance to the version of record appearing online and final in an issue — and the final print data is often the one that counts for merit and promotion. On the chart below, those stretches appear as gaps in the faint through-line — and for many papers they add up to more than the review time itself.
Graduate students rarely get to see that hidden part of the process. Seeing it makes the long road feel less like a personal failing and more like the normal shape of the work.
Desk reject
Reject after review
Withdrawn
Accepting journal
Accepted
First online
Version of record (issue)
◆ In-principle acceptance
✱ Registered report
For online-only journals the online and final versions are the same date — a single ◉.
Each row is one accepted paper, ordered by acceptance date. The bar is time under review at each journal (coloured by outcome); earlier, rejecting journals are shown by outcome but not named. The filled dot (●) is acceptance; then comes first online (○, advance access) and the version of record in a journal issue (◉). For online-only journals those two coincide as a single ◉, and the gap from ● to ◉ is production time. The full interactive version lets you zoom to any window.
And here is the same record ranked purely by total time under review — the gaps between journals collapsed away, so each bar is only the months a paper actually sat with reviewers:
Same papers, ranked by total months actually under review. A handful of acceptance-only records (older papers whose submission dates I haven't reconstructed) don't appear here — they show as dots in the calendar above.
Registered reports bend the clock
Particularly though not exclusively for scholars who do experimental work, a timeline like this also has to reckon with registered reports, where the clock runs differently. In a registered report the study design is reviewed before any data are collected: the journal grants an in-principle acceptance — the ◆ on my chart — on the strength of the protocol, and the results-stage review comes later. So “time under review” and even “acceptance” mean something different; a paper can be accepted in principle before we run the study. Any honest picture of how long publishing takes has to treat that two-stage path as its own kind of timeline rather than force it into the same bar as a standard submission. As my graphs show, I believe a major barrier for junior scholars undertaking registered reports is the length of time the two stages take.
I don’t always aim for the top-tier journal
There’s a third thing the data shows, and I’ll be honest about it: I don’t always send a paper to the top-tier journal first. You can see it in the chart below — plenty of my papers landed on the first or second try, which means I wasn’t always trying to land a top three publication.
In some cases I probably should have aimed higher. But part of it is deliberate. I run a differentiated strategy depending on the kind of paper: some work is a better fit for a specialized or methods outlet than for a flagship general-interest journal, and the goal isn’t always the most prestigious placement — sometimes it’s the right readership, a faster timeline, or a venue that takes the method seriously. My record makes that strategy visible.
Other scholars make very different choices, and I think there’s real value in students seeing that there’s no single “correct” path through publishing. The people who only ever show you their CV show you the destinations. What I’m trying to show is the route.