As much as it may seem like an abundance of submissions and accepted papers is a problem any journal would like to have, a backlog of unpublished manuscripts can be stressful on a journal’s relationship with authors as well as on the editorial staff. Furthermore, if your publication becomes known as a twilight zone where papers languish for years awaiting publication, many potential repeat contributors may decide to submit their new work elsewhere, and your once overflowing manuscript pipeline may dry up.

Possible Causes

The first step to diminishing a backlog is to identify the cause. Taking a critical look at editorial practices can be daunting, and there may be more than one factor contributing to your mountain of manuscripts.

Acceptance rate  Begin by taking a look at the acceptance rate for your publication. Are you accepting more and more manuscripts each year, while your page budget stays the same? Make sure decisions are being made in line with your page budget for the year, and communicate your page budget to key decision makers so that everyone has a responsibility for keeping to it.

Editorial practice   Is there a choke point in your workflow causing manuscripts to languish? Examine both your peer review and production workflows to make sure that from submission to publication there are no points of friction.

A temporary influx  Did something happen in your organization or your discipline to create a surge of interest? An especially press-worthy paper, new discovery, or even a successful annual conference may have garnered a bit of extra attention (and submissions) for your publication. Consider whether this is a temporary boost or whether you should expect to continue receiving submissions at an increased rate. Chart your submission history and your acceptance rates to see if you are experiencing a steady increase, or a quick peak followed by submission rates that are more typical for your publication.

Creative Ways to Publish Your Backlog of Manuscripts

After identifying the reasons for your backlog, your next question should be, “How do we fix this without blowing our budget out of the water?”

An Expedited Workflow for Open-Access or Online-Only Articles

This option offers your authors a way to sidestep the backlog and publish quickly, with limited cost to the society. Articles can be published online at the same time as the print journal is mailed, or they can be published ahead of the full issue. You may even mention online-only articles in the print version. Online articles could appear in the table of contents with an online-only icon or in a special section with abstracts only.

You may want to keep this as a limited option, offering the oldest manuscripts the opportunity first, with around five online-only articles per issue. This offer can be extended to authors currently in the queue for publication, and will offer some immediate relief to the backlog.

Preprint Online Publication

This publication model goes by many names: preprints, early online release, issue in progress, papers in press, etc. The concept is simple: publish accepted articles online before they appear in a printed issue. This may be an ideal solution if your backlog is due to a clog in your editorial workflow rather than an overabundance of submissions. Consider where papers get stuck in your workflow. This may help you determine whether you should release papers online immediately after acceptance (prior to copyediting and typesetting) or only after they have been copyedited, typeset, and approved for final publication. The printed issue may not be ready for several more weeks or even months, but the article is published and available for citation. This solution can help keep your authors happy by getting their papers published sooner.

Supplemental Issue(s) to Clear the Decks

This solution may hurt your budget a bit, but it will gain adoration from authors. Consider doing a special issue grouping papers of the same area, subject, research type, etc., into one issue. If your budget is too tight to handle the extra cost, try soliciting advertisers to sponsor a special issue. Since these issues can often be very focused and appeal to a specific audience, finding willing sponsors may be easier than you think. This is also a great solution if you suspect your backlog is due to a temporary influx of submissions. If you find yourself needing to publish several supplemental issues each year to keep up, it may be better to consider other options.

Start Another Journal to Publish Second-Tier Articles

If you find you have a lot of articles that are written by students or that are part of a sub-discipline, consider starting a new journal. Keep in mind that the new journal need not follow the same publication model as your original journal. Many journals charge authors submission and publication fees. It may be easier for your authors to accept a new model for a new publication than for an existing publication.

Limit Article Length

Limiting article length is never easy; there always seems to be an exception to the rule. However, creating a game plan for how you will handle authors requesting that the limit be waived and clearly communicating this to editors and reviewers could help you avoid excessively long manuscripts that eat into your page budget. You could even institute a surcharge for articles that exceed the maximum page limit to help cover the cost of publication.

Reduce Acceptance Rates

Consider your acceptance rate. Remind your reviewers and editors that not every paper submitted to your journal should be published. You may want to refine your journal’s mission or narrow the focus to maintain a lower acceptance rate. Although it can sometimes be difficult to turn away good papers, consider how the quality of your publication could improve if you raise the bar.

Publish More Pages

If higher submission and/or acceptance rates appear to be permanent, you may want to increase your page budget. Keep in mind that in publishing more articles you may risk negatively affecting your journal’s impact factor by flooding the market with articles faster than they can be cited. However, quality articles that meet your journal’s rigorous peer-review standards may have a positive impact if they are well cited. Of course, publishing more pages means increased costs, so here are a few suggestions for generating revenue to cover the increase:

Author page charges and author submission fees  This is not a popular option with authors to be sure. However, instituting or increasing the amount of existing author page charges and author submission fees would go a long way towards helping cover the cost of extra pages each year.

Remember that you don’t have to enforce the same fee structure for every type of article. For example, you may want to charge more for a research article than a book review. You could also consider linking page charges with print publication and not charging authors satisfied with online-only publication. This would give them an incentive to forgo print all together.

You may wish to waive publication fees in certain circumstances. Make it clear to authors that they can request a waiver and let them know your policy. Make sure guidelines are clear and that your editorial office adheres to the policy.

Increase subscription prices  If you are increasing the amount of material published each year, either by adding pages to each issue or increasing the number of issues, an increase in your subscription rate is justified. Make sure your readers know that they are getting more for their money. Point out how much more content is included in each issue when they new subscription rates are announced.

Review your rate structure. If you offer a single subscription rate you may want to consider a change. Offering different rates for print and online, discounted rates for students, or charging increased postage for international print subscribers may help you apply rate increases where they are appropriate without risking severe attrition due to increased rates across the board.

Advertising   Many STM journals have a strict no-advertising policy, but let’s face it, advertising can be a great source of revenue. If you’ve never allowed advertising in the past, take another look at the market to see if your journal could support advertising sales efforts. Advertising can be done in a way that is respectful of editorial integrity, and if it allows you to add more relevant content to your issues, your readers probably won’t complain.

A healthy flow of manuscripts is essential to the success of any publication. We all know that authors have a choice when considering where to submit their papers. Managing your backlog can help ensure that accepted manuscripts are published in a timely manner. This not only keeps your journal current with the most up-to-date research, but it makes the author experience a positive one, meaning authors will consider your journal the next time they have a paper to publish.