Publication delay of manuscripts in periodicals published by CSIR-NISCAIR

Publishing in scholarly peer-reviewed journals causes long delays from submission to its subsequent publication. This may be due to the long peer-review process or backlog of manuscripts waiting in line in the journals. The present study examines the publication delay in 13 journals published by CSIR-NISCAIR at three different stages. These were delays between receipt of manuscript and its revision, editorial delay, revision and its subsequent publication, i.e. technical delay, and the total delay. The study examined 1223 articles published in these 13 journals in the year 2015, except for 1 journal for which data for 2104 have been used. The analysis indicates that the publication delay varied from one discipline to another and from one journal to another journal. The highest time delay was found to be for the Indian Journal of Chemical Technology, and lowest for the Indian Journal of Chemistry – A. The total publication delay varied between 5.2 and 22.4 months. In most of the journals, the reason for delay was technical.