The Glacial Pace of Scientific Publishing: Why It Hurts Everyone and What We Can Do To Fix It

In fact, the situation with extreme delays in scientific publication is likely to be even worse than it appears from this informal and nonscientific survey. It is common practice at many journals to discard the date of initial submission and reset the submission counter to the final submission prior to a positive decision. Add to this the reality that many manuscripts are subjected to serial submission, rejection, and resubmission at multiple journals. This means that years not months can elapse between the initial submission at the first journal until the ultimate publication of the same paper at the final journal that accepts and publishes the work.

From The Glacial Pace of Scientific Publishing: Why It Hurts Everyone and What We Can Do To Fix It