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Abstracts scored today
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Papers simplified (2026)
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Retractions documented
Papers of the week
No papers yet. The pipeline publishes here after its first run.
Retractions
No retractions logged yet. Documented here once the pipeline runs.
The publishing system
Peer review takes 5 months on average. Most of that time is chasing reviewers, not actually reviewing.
The bottleneck in scientific publishing is not quality control. It is reviewer recruitment. Three studies from 2022 to 2024 put the average time-to-first-decision between 4.2 and 6.8 months, with reviewer recruitment accounting for 55 to 70% of that window.
| Source | Finding |
|---|---|
| Publons Global Review Report | Average 5.1 months time-to-decision across 1,300 journals (2023) |
| eLife editorial analysis | Reviewer recruitment = 58% of pre-decision delay (2022) |
| PLOS ONE internal data | Median 4.2 months; 30% of papers take 8+ months (2024) |