How long does it take to publish a paper? I posted the picture below on Twitter to show how long it takes for us to publish a paper. The answer is 235 days. This is the median time from submission at the first journal to publication online or in print. The data are from our last ten papers. The infographic proved popular with 40 retweets and 22 favourites. It was pointed out to me that the a few things would improve this visualisation: 1.