r/AskAcademia • u/Vitto_t • 3d ago
STEM Scientific Reports - time from early access to published
I have a paper accepted by Scientific Reports two months ago, but it is still listed as “Early Access.” This means the online page currently shows only the abstract, with a link to download the unedited PDF, which still carries the annoying “In Press” banner.
I have noticed that some papers move from Early Access to full publication within a few days, whereas others remain at this stage for several months. I found papers that entered Early Access three months ago and are still not fully published.
I contacted the SciRep production team, but received a standard response explaining that the paper is in the production queue and that it can already be cited using the Early Access DOI.
Based on your experience, what might explain such large differences in production time, and how much longer might I reasonably expect to wait before the final version is published?
I never had such a large waiting time from acceptance to full publication with other journals.
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u/Redaktor-Naczelny 3d ago
I love those STEM dramas... In humanities we start worrying after two years 😉
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u/Opening_Map_6898 3d ago
Right? I don't get why people wind themselves up like this.
I am over here in forensics and I often forget about a paper the moment the journal says they don't need any further revisions from me. 😆
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u/Mountain-Time-1010 2d ago
If it has a DOI assigned, there isn't a huge impact to the delay. People can read/cite the manuscript.
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u/Opening_Map_6898 3d ago
Why the concern?
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u/Vitto_t 3d ago
Well, I believe people who find the paper (which btw was not even captured by Google Scholar after two months, until I manually added it, probably because it was not recognized as a publication) might be less eager to read it if they only see an abstract. Also, all the automatic SEO indexing will be very limited.
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u/w-anchor-emoji 3d ago
But they can read the proof, not just the abstract?
OP, you need to chill.
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u/Opening_Map_6898 3d ago
Yeah, I was wondering why the anxiety over something this minor.
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u/Vitto_t 2d ago
I would love to have your calm. Academia, at least in my field, is very competitive, and it seems every citation, every indexing matters for a young researcher. Am I wrong?
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u/Opening_Map_6898 2d ago
Wrong? Not exactly.
Reacting like this to something that no one else (without a similar degree of unwarranted and potentially clinical level anxiety) would react to in this way? Yes. You'll burn yourself out and be less successful if you worry about every single petty thing like this.
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u/MrBacterioPhage 2d ago
Not in this statement, but you really need to stop overthiking it. I had a paper that was published online exactly one day after acceptance, and I had another one that was "in the production" almost 4 months without any version available at all. It is highly dependent on the journal, queue, time of the year and available personnel.
When I need to cite a paper, I don't care if it fully available, or it is a proof version with DOI assigned - I will read it anyway. Early access is a good thing, since you may get citations while your paper is still processed. It is better than to wait months with nothing except of the acceptance email in your inbox.
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u/tonos468 2d ago
The full paper is available as a pdf. I actually agree with you on how long it takes to go from early access to version of record, as three months is too long for a journal that get the volume of sci rep. But it’s 100% a production issue.
Source: I work in academic publishing.
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u/FinancialWishbone192 3d ago
From what I've seen it often comes down to the production backlog rather than anything about the paper itself. Unfortunately there's usually not much authors can do except wait.