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One of our drafts was accepted for publication in Nov. 30, 2020. It has not been published online yet. I have not even received the first proof. Is it appropriate to push the Editor?

Thanks!

Drake Marquis
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    What are the reasons why this paper should be published ahead of the queue? Note that other authors also would like their accepted papers to be published without unnecessary delays. – Dmitry Savostyanov Jan 11 '21 at 14:06
  • Following @DmitrySavostyanov question/remark, I'm guessing that the reasons are linked with competing groups working on a similar topic, or related with time sensitive topics (e.g. covid19). If you explain to the editor these reasons for urgency in publishing the paper, it is very likely that the editor will not only understand, but also be an interested party in speeding up the process to guarantee relevance/visibility of his journal. – cinico Jan 11 '21 at 14:19
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    Push your community to use preprint servers! – user151413 Jan 11 '21 at 15:30

4 Answers4

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You can ask, but "push" is probably the wrong verb. If you have a specific need to see it, then include that in your ask, but I doubt that you will be successful.

If the editor responded to every such request, I suspect there would be chaos and thrashing. You may have bumped up against year end holidays accounting for some delay.

And they will probably prioritize their own process over your request. But you can ask. Especially you can ask for an estimate of when it might appear.

Stay polite for strategic reasons if nothing else.

Buffy
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Assuming you mean the editor who handled your paper during the peer review process, the answer is no, because it's the wrong person to "push". The role of the editorial board members end once the paper is accepted. The person(s) you want to push is the publisher. How to contact the publisher is not always obvious, but if the journal has a contact email address, I would start there.

Allure
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You should not push the editor unless you know that a few months is a long time for this journal and in your subject area. I have had papers where it the time between acceptance and online publication took a few days (physics) and others where it took a few years (pure math). You need to first find out what is the length papers generally take to appear. In the future, investigate this before yous submitted to the journal.

Terry Loring
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You can do what you want but once the paper is accepted it is transferred to production and it's out of the hands of the editor. Moreover, pretty much everyone would like to publish their papers "as soon as possible" so you're likely in the same (long) queue as plenty of others.

ZeroTheHero
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  • In my experience it's the case that papers can be accelerated if desired. It involves prioritizing the paper during production, e.g. everyone stops working on other papers/journals/projects to work on that paper. This kind of request for acceleration would have to come from some authority figure though. An editorial board member would be a great authority figure. – Allure Jan 11 '21 at 23:33
  • @Allure that's news to me. Interesting. – ZeroTheHero Jan 12 '21 at 00:01