Fastest journals to publish in 2026: acceptance times by field

How long journals take from submission to acceptance, measured from the received and accepted dates publishers deposit in PubMed for 4,289 journals (articles published 2024–2025). The typical journal has a median of 114 days, including peer review and revisions. Pick a field to see its journals ranked from fastest to slowest.

Read this before using the ranking

Accepted papers only. Rejected manuscripts never receive an acceptance date, so these figures say nothing about desk-rejection speed, rejection rates or your chance of acceptance.
Not the time to a first decision. The interval runs from the “received” date to the “accepted” date the publisher deposits in PubMed. It includes editorial handling, peer review, every round of revision and the time authors spent revising.
Journals record dates differently. Some reset the received date when a revised manuscript arrives, and manuscripts transferred from another journal may keep or lose their earlier dates. Short medians are therefore not always comparable with long ones.
Past timelines are not a promise. Each figure comes from up to 100 recent articles published 2024–2025. Article types, special issues, editors and workload all change, and your paper may take much longer or much less time.
Fast is not the same as good. Check the journal’s scope, indexing, peer-review policy and editorial board before submitting. An unusually quick acceptance can be a warning sign of light peer review.

Journal Metrics is independent and is not affiliated with any journal or publisher listed. The figures are for information only, may contain errors and change as PubMed records are updated. Confirm current timelines on the journal’s own website. See how to spot predatory journals.

Acceptance times by field

Fields are ordered by their typical median. The fastest journals listed leave out medians under 30 days, which usually reflect how dates are recorded rather than quick review.

Typical submission-to-acceptance time by field
Field	Journals	Typical median	Among the fastest
Fastest chemistry journals	67	81 days	Acta Crystallographica Section E-Crystallographic Communications (30 d), CHEMISTRY-A EUROPEAN JOURNAL (51 d), ANGEWANDTE CHEMIE-INTERNATIONAL EDITION (52 d)
Fastest materials science journals	42	91 days	RSC Advances (57 d), Polymer Chemistry (57 d), ACS Polymers Au (62 d)
Fastest cardiology journals	130	96 days	Journal of Clinical Medicine (33 d), Postepy w Kardiologii Interwencyjnej (37 d), Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine (43 d)
Fastest rheumatology journals	38	97 days	BEST PRACTICE & RESEARCH IN CLINICAL RHEUMATOLOGY (42 d), Journal of the Belgian Society of Radiology (45 d), Lancet Rheumatology (50 d)
Fastest endocrinology journals	74	99 days	Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology (39 d), Metabolism Open (40 d), Journal of the ASEAN Federation of Endocrine Societies (51 d)
Fastest engineering journals	95	99 days	Materials (30 d), Membranes (33 d), Biomimetics (34 d)
Fastest neurology journals	80	100 days	Neurointervention (39 d), CLINICAL NEUROLOGY AND NEUROSURGERY (54 d), JOURNAL OF NEURAL TRANSMISSION (57 d)
Fastest hematology journals	37	103 days	SEMINARS IN HEMATOLOGY (42 d), Mediterranean Journal of Hematology and Infectious Diseases (54 d), Clinical Lymphoma Myeloma & Leukemia (58 d)
Fastest surgery journals	192	104 days	Journal of Craniovertebral Junction and Spine (31 d), Korean Journal of Gastroenterology (33 d), CLINICAL ORTHOPAEDICS AND RELATED RESEARCH (42 d)
Fastest infectious diseases journals	73	104 days	Pathogens (31 d), Viruses-Basel (34 d), Diseases (43 d)
Fastest immunology journals	83	107 days	CYTOKINE & GROWTH FACTOR REVIEWS (34 d), Allergologie select (35 d), IMMUNOLOGICAL REVIEWS (36 d)
Fastest nutrition journals	31	107 days	Foods (33 d), Preventive Nutrition and Food Science (50 d), BIOLOGICAL TRACE ELEMENT RESEARCH (68 d)
Fastest obstetrics and gynecology journals	33	109 days	Gynecologic Oncology Reports (55 d), Gynecologic Oncology (65 d), OBSTETRICS AND GYNECOLOGY (70 d)
Fastest dentistry journals	85	110 days	Journal of Functional Biomaterials (37 d), International Orthodontics (52 d), Journal of Dental Anesthesia and Pain Medicine (53 d)
Fastest oncology journals	196	111 days	Cancers (32 d), Journal of Liquid Biopsy (36 d), INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR SCIENCES (36 d)
Fastest plant science journals	59	111 days	Plants-Basel (35 d), INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR SCIENCES (36 d), Cell Surface (51 d)
Fastest biomedical engineering journals	53	111 days	Biomimetics (34 d), Bioengineering-Basel (38 d), Smart Medicine (60 d)
Fastest radiology journals	93	113 days	Diagnostics (34 d), NUCLEAR MEDICINE REVIEW (37 d), Ophthalmology Retina (42 d)
Fastest molecular biology journals	352	115 days	Life-Basel (32 d), Metabolites (34 d), ACTA HISTOCHEMICA ET CYTOCHEMICA (35 d)
Fastest neuroscience journals	229	119 days	Brain Sciences (30 d), BULLETIN OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE (35 d), TRENDS IN PHARMACOLOGICAL SCIENCES (50 d)
Fastest psychiatry journals	38	124 days	JOURNAL OF HEADACHE AND PAIN (58 d), AMERICAN JOURNAL OF GERIATRIC PSYCHIATRY (68 d), EUROPEAN NEUROPSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY (73 d)
Fastest nephrology journals	32	124 days	Indian Journal of Nephrology (52 d), Frontiers in Nephrology (74 d), KIDNEY INTERNATIONAL (86 d)
Fastest ophthalmology journals	47	126 days	Ophthalmology Retina (42 d), Ophthalmology and Therapy (45 d), International Journal of Retina and Vitreous (62 d)
Fastest public health journals	189	127 days	Nutrients (31 d), Canadian Liver Journal (33 d), TERAPEVTICHESKII ARKHIV (39 d)
Fastest environmental science journals	126	127 days	Toxics (32 d), Marine Genomics (42 d), Journal of Xenobiotics (50 d)
Fastest pediatrics journals	31	131 days	Seminars in Pediatric Neurology (53 d), EARLY HUMAN DEVELOPMENT (57 d), JOURNAL OF CLINICAL PHARMACOLOGY (83 d)
Fastest genetics journals	67	134 days	Journal of Hematology (51 d), Hematology Reports (57 d), AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HEMATOLOGY (59 d)
Fastest ecology journals	53	144 days	JOURNAL OF MICROBIOLOGY (56 d), Biodiversity Data Journal (66 d), Data in Brief (69 d)
Fastest psychology journals	150	165 days	Health Psychology Research (34 d), JOURNAL OF ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY (38 d), Current Opinion in Psychology (43 d)

About this data

Source: the received and accepted dates publishers deposit in PubMed, read through the public NCBI E-utilities for articles published 2024-01-01 to 2025-12-31, up to 100 recent articles per journal. Data checked 2026-11-03.
A journal is ranked only when at least 20 articles have both dates and at least half of the articles checked have them. Journals that do not deposit dates in PubMed, including most journals outside the life sciences, cannot be ranked here.
The ranking uses each journal’s median: half of its accepted articles took less time and half took more. The middle-half range shows the 25th to 75th percentile.
Fields come from the OpenAlex classification of each journal’s research topics. A journal joins a field when at least two of its four main topics are in it, so a journal can appear in more than one field and some classifications are imperfect.
Quartile and score are the journal’s best OpenAlex subfield quartile and its Journal Metrics Score, shown for context; they play no part in the order.

The full journal-level dataset is in the journal acceptance times study (with a CSV download). Spot an error or a journal whose dates look wrong? Tell us.

Looking for citation rankings instead? See the journal rankings.