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Like a lot of beginner mathematicians (I guess), I'm worried about the publishing process time.
In order to better understand that, I have a series of small questions (answers expected in average).

  1. How many papers an editor receives every day (for all the journals in which he/she is editor)?
  2. How many papers an editor manages in the same time?
  3. How many emails an editor receives every day from authors?
  4. How long does an editor dedicate every day for this workload?
  5. How long does a referee dedicate every day for one paper?
  6. How many papers an advanced mathematician refer in the same time?

Any other relevant question/answer is welcome.

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    $\begingroup$ I'd guess that if you search a bit on Academia site, you might find out that some of these questions are already answered there. For example, this seems rather close to one of your questions: How much time should one spend refereeing a paper? and How much time should I spend on reviewing a paper? $\endgroup$ Nov 8, 2017 at 15:17
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    $\begingroup$ I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's not about mathematics, the relevant answers would vary so widely that averages are meaningless, the desired sort of average isn't specified (average over all editors, over all papers, or what?), and there are too many borderline cases (e.g., editors for a single special issue of a journal). $\endgroup$ Nov 8, 2017 at 15:52
  • $\begingroup$ @AndreasBlass: your comment is relevant, but it should exist a way to make this post on-topic (you can improve it if you want). My goal is to better understand the publishing process for mathematical papers, and in particular the workload of editors and referees. I think it is about mathematics because the standards are specific to the mathematical papers. For example, it is mainly in mathematical papers that there are proofs, for other sciences there are explanations and interpretations of experimental results. Are you worried about the publishing process time? If not, can you explain why? $\endgroup$ Nov 9, 2017 at 14:36
  • $\begingroup$ I don't think "the workload of editors and referees" is a well-defined notion. My workload, as an editor of several journals, has varied from less than one paper per year to one or two papers per week. Averaging these (either with respect to journals or with respect to papers) yields no useful information. $\endgroup$ Nov 9, 2017 at 15:38
  • $\begingroup$ On your other question: I don't worry about time to publication. For one thing, I can put my work on the arxiv, so interested people will know about it whether or not it's published. Second, I'm no longer looking for any promotions, so nobody is inspecting my publication list in detail. My annual salary does depend on producing papers, but not much on how long it takes from submission to publication. (Obviously, the situation is different for younger folks, but you asked specifically about me.) $\endgroup$ Nov 9, 2017 at 15:42

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