One question we often get on this site in one form or the other is: Is my paper under review (or similar) for too long and if yes, how should I react? Now, suppose I have gone through all the steps to answer this question in a normal situation: I have procured statistics of the journal’s handling or peer-review times, added a fair margin for individual variability, etc. My question is: How should I modify these in lights of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis? I do not want to bother editors more than appropriate.
The obvious thoughts are:
Some reviewers and editors are busy with challenges arising due to the crisis, e.g., due to having to switch to online teaching, having no childcare, etc.
On the other hand, some reviewers and editors now have more time available due to conferences being cancelled, not being able to access their labs, and similar.
Some fields are obviously directly affected by the crisis, in particular medicine, virology, and epidemiology. I am not considering those.
I am only interested in answers that go beyond such obvious thoughts, for example being based on experience as an editor. The ideal are answers based on statistics, but those likely do not exist yet (but will be welcome when they eventually will).