Polymer Testing 32 (2013) iii

ilable at ScienceDirect

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Polymer Testing

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/polytest

Editorial

You may have heard the joke about the student travelling on a train who looked up and saw that he was sitting next toEinstein. He was quite excited by this and asked "Excuse me professor. Does Boston stop at this train? Apart from raising asmile, it serves as a reminder that everything is relative. This is particularly so with respect to peoples’ attitude to time.

As a generality, it can be said that the world has speeded up, not literally, but in terms of the speed at which things can bedone. At the root of this are the various developments in technology that have speeded up transport, increased the rates ofproduction and revolutionised how quickly we can communicate. The result is an increase in the pace of life generally, andwith it a change in attitudes to time and in expectations. In many ways, people have come to expect things to happeninstantly. This is felt in just about every area of work and leisure but it does not necessarily mean that everybody sees timescales in the same way nor that they are consistent in how they view times for different processes.

In publishing, the main impact has been due to the communication revolution. In a surprisingly short timewe havemovedfrom hard copy by mail to the instant world of the internet; from laborious printing methods to electronic publishing.However, in this, as in any field, the rate achieved by technology is of little consequence if the reaction time of people is muchgreater.

A paper is submitted in minutes and can be processed and sent for review in a similar time scale, assuming that is that theeditor sets a very short reaction time. The governing rate is then the time it takes for reviews to be produced, and noteverybody sees this in the same light. Some reviews are returned in a few days, others take several weeks. Obviously, it mustdepend on the workload the reviewer is carrying, but also on the perception of what constitutes a reasonable turnaroundtime. What is a reasonable time scale for assessing and editing a paper? It used to be as much as months but now someoptimistic people expect a scale measurable in days. Probably, 4-5 weeks maximum is about the level achievable in practice.

There is a similar lag stemming from the time for the authors to response to review comments and editing. Once again,some papers are returned in a couple of days others have to be chased after several weeks. The same situation exists asregards the authors’workload but also as regards their attitude to time. Relatively, people can have greatly differing conceptsof what the timescale should be, but I would not bet on those expecting a very quick reviewing process to be the first torespond to queries.

However, what I want to know is "Does the editor stop at this journal or does the journal stop at this editor?

R. BrownE-mail address: roger@eleventowns.com

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0142-9418(13)00181-5