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Received 9 February, published in the June/July issue; I wonder why such a long turnaround time for a short letter? (The publication is more or less monthly, s

• Someone 11y ago
  long? If you look at http://www.ams.org/notices/201410/rnoti-p1268.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/201410/rnoti-p1268.pdf (google “AMS notices backlogs” for other years), few journals beat that for papers, and many go way over that. And yes, a short letter is different, but they might have a backlog of other letters to publish, may not want to limit the amount of letters per issue, and, for all I know, that June/July issue might have gone to print in May. Even if the editors worked at infinite speed, in the end, this still is a paper journal with its limitation on number of pages, ratio of articles to reviews to letters, etc.
• Someone 11y ago
  Long? If you look at http://www.ams.org/notices/201410/rnoti-p1268.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/201410/rnoti-p1268.pdf (google “AMS notices backlog” for other years), that is fast for a paper in a mathematical journal. Yes, this is not a paper, but they may have more letters queued up, and this may actually be surprisingly fast. That June/July issue might have gone to print in early May. In the end, this is still a print journal, with its limits on page counts, expectancies of ratios between articles, reviews, and letters, etc.