I rarely leave comments at other blogs (and usually regret it when I do ... much safer to post comment here)

In response to a comment on this post at MR, I said:

“Why does it take more than six weeks to review a paper?”

It takes a day or two to review a paper but about 6+ weeks for a good referee to get around to reviewing it. “Good referees” are those who are doing research in the area of your paper. And by “get around” I mean that it takes that long for the paper to rise to the top of the stack of the to do list. Good referees are teaching their classes, writing their own papers, writing grant proposals, doing university service and oftentimes have one or more papers to review in front of yours.

What authors need to remember is that the folks who agree to review your paper are the ones supplying public goods for very little reward. The folks we ought to be fussing about, the ones who indirectly cause significant delays, are those who refuse to undertake reviews.

That said, some referees agree to review a paper in 6 weeks and then never do it. It would be great if they could be outed somehow!

via marginalrevolution.com

There are some comments on my comments and replies.