• Jaime A Teixeira da Silva.
• , P. O. Box 7, Ikenobe 3011-2, Kagawa-ken, 761-0799, Japan. jaimetex@yahoo.com.
• Ir J Med Sci. 2022 Dec 1; 191 (6): 245724582457-2458.

BackgroundOne of the satisfactions of publishing a paper in an academic journal is seeing the process reach closure after potentially weeks or months of peer review and editorial processing. Typically, in the latter step, a proof is developed and the paper stays in press until the paper is assigned to a journal issue, in the case of a print journal. In some cases, it is possible to find papers that are in press for years.AimsAlthough it is unclear why this is the case, when a paper stays in an "in limbo" status for so long, it almost defeats the purpose of rapid proof and online publication.MethodThe date of the last "in press" article was manually extracted and compared in 23 medicine-related journals indexed in Elsevier's Science Direct.ResultsAmong the 23 journals, "in press" articles ranged from less than one month to almost 16 years.ConclusionEditors and publishers should endeavor to publish all "in press" papers within a reasonable amount of time. If not, they should rethink their publication process so as not to leave the intellect of some academics in a perpetual state of publishing "limbo".© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland.

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