I believe most of you doing PhD or MPhil here had published in some journals or going to publish in the near future.
Since the trend nowadays is "publish before viva voce/publish before you can graduate", I have a few questions that I'm interested to know about:

1) how long does it take for your paper to be accepted into a journal?
2) normally what kinds of questions does the reviewer brought up?
3) when do you start writing a paper? After data collection? In the middle of your enrollment? Beginning of your enrollment?

Thanks for sharing

1) It depends on a lot of factors. Could take months or even up to a year! But normally, the reviewers would get back to you with their comments one to three months following first submission (if it does pass the editorial stage).

2) Data validation (more experiments). Reasons for doing/choosing so and so (if it's not clearly stated). Redundancy (over-lapping in the results and discussions).

3) Just like writing a thesis, one should keep writing as one progresses. But I doubt many do that. The next ideal way would be to start writing once you have (or going to have) enough data.

PS: Science-based

This post has been edited by PseudoGene: Mar 5 2014, 12:19 AM

1. Depends on the journal, the average is around 2-6 months. Good journals usually give you a quick response whether or not your paper will be forwarded for review. Remember not to submit the same paper for review at different journals - they cross check with each other, and it can result in all of them rejecting your work.
2. This is subjective, as it depends on your work. Questions can range from the validity of your data to methodological choices you've made. Do not be discouraged by a bad review, instead use it to beef up your paper for future submissions.
3. You publish whenever you're a step ahead. Eg: Your project has 5 milestones, so you start publishing the results of the first milestone once you're already working on the second. It helps ensure that other researchers can't overtake you. Constant publication keeps you on your feet, especially when it comes to keeping up with current literature. Last but not least, try stay away from review papers. I see a lot of first first year postgrads publishing these based on their literature review - review papers are generally published by experts who have years in the field; any journal that willingly accepts a review paper from a freshie isn't a good journal to begin with.