Should I contact the journal because I am not receiving a response after a year?

Question

I have submitted a paper to a Springer mathematical journal. The reviewers asked for a revision, and after revising the paper, the editor's decision, alongside with the reviewers' one (of course), was to accept the paper. In the email that I have received it was stated: "You will receive an e-mail in due course regarding the production process". But after that, a whole year has passed and nothing happened. No info after that email. After logging into my author's account, on the main menu in section Completed I can only see: - Submissions with a decision: 1 - Submissions with a production completed: 1.

1. Generally, what does production completed means? I read about MyPublication service on the Springer website but I never had a chance to see the questionnaire. Just to mention, I did not get any info, nor doi number, nor anything similar. Only that the paper is accepted, a year ago.

2. Should I write to the journal? To the Editor, the Editor-in-Chief, or some service to inquire about my paper?

There is a similar question (Springer special issue status) but it regards the special issue status. In my case it is a regular one. Also, the comments and answers on that thread were not helpful in my case.

Answer 1

Yes, after a year you should definitely write to the editor and ask for an update.

Production completed likely means that the paper is actually ready for immediate publication either in print or online. But check, nevertheless. Print, especially, takes a while to get out the door. But even online publication takes a while to move from staging to final servers.

But, yes, ask.

Answer 2

Yes, you should definitely ask. Something similar to this happened to me in the past. My paper was just stuck in some administrative function. Sometimes a simple e-mail can speed it up.

Answer 3

Firstly, one year is too long to wait for this --- for a production email you should have written back to them after a month or two. In any case, since it has been a year, before contacting the journal, you should do a quick literature search to see if the paper has already been published. (Because that is also a possible meaning of "production completed".) If the paper has already been published then you are probably too late to worry about it. If it is still in production, you might still have time to look at the proofs before publication.

Answer 4

Production should not take a year. In fact in my experience any paper that takes more than ~3 months to get from acceptance to publication online is seriously out of the norm.

I recommend writing to the journal asking about what's going on. Something almost certainly broke - "production completed" makes it sound like they've finished what they're doing and are waiting for a response from you (did you miss their email?). I would contact the journal, not the editorial board, since the board are not usually involved in the production process. If you can't find the journal's contact email, try replying to the acceptance letter (the one that said "You will receive an e-mail in due course regarding the production process").