Wednesday, June 18, 2014

An Extreme Publication Lag

We all complain about the delays associated with the academic publishing process. The referees can be very slow in reaching their recommendations; the revisions sometimes seem to be interminable; and then the accepted paper sits in a long queue awaiting its grand entry onto the world stage.

Occasionally - very occasionally - we encounter an extreme outlier in this process. I seem to recall that there was a paper by Paul Samuelson, written in the 1940's, that eventually appeared in print some decades later.

Olav Bjerkholt has kindly drawn my attention to an exceptional econometric example of delayed publication, involving an important paper by one of our founding fathers - Trygve Haavelmo. (Olav has written extensively and authoritatively on the early history of econometrics, and I've mentioned some of his contributions previously - here, and here.)

Now, what about this publishing delay?