A Lesson in Journal Article Publishing

I was pleased to see that my article "Immigration and Transnationalism: Rethinking the Role of the State in Latin America" was just published in "early view" form in International Migration.

However, that article was a lesson in the difficulties of traditional journal publishing. You see, after a revise & resubmit, the final version of the article was accepted on October 23, 2009. That was 3.5 years ago. I am thankful that the topic was not terribly time sensitive.

I don't want to come down too hard on the journal, because I am well aware of the things that can delay publication (and I'm sure I've had authors annoyed at me) but this many years is over the top. It's about as inefficient a way you can possibly find for diffusion of ideas.