How quickly could you write a decent academic article?

[Zacromagnons]

The speed at which articles relating to Covid (not just about the science, the vaccine, the epidemiology and so on but also reviews on how isolation can affect mental health and so on), have been researched, planned, and written, has really astonished and amazed me and some of my academic colleagues.

Which then ended up in a discussion as to how long it would take us to write a publishable article, presuming we already had all our data. I think it would take me weeks to even read background articles for the introduction let alone writing it all up.

So I just wondered what the academics of MN thought

Not how long - how quickly!

How quickly could we do it

If you have already written on a suitable topic, and just need to add some COVID-19 touch's, you have hit the jackpot nowadays.

Yes, that’s true. I suppose if you’re an expert in loneliness and mental health then it would be easy to make this relevant to the current situation and get it published quickly.

I once went from preliminary simulations to a complete article (with the best set of reviews I've ever gotten, still...) in slightly less than two weeks. Deadline was 3am (midnight 3 time zones away) and we submitted minutes ahead of time. I wouldn't want to do it regularly. Also helped that there were 3 authors and we all trusted each other to do their parts.

About ten years ago I could churn out a (good) article-length piece of writing in about two weeks (I'm humanities). Now a similar piece of work would take me months. I blame parenthood and the peri-menopause! That and having too many different projects on the go at the same time, which means I find it hard to focus on one piece of work.

Writing up after data & results were acquired, probably takes me, typically, 1-2 days, OP, sorry. Sciences.
I've been doing that quite a lot lately.
Helps (in sciences) if you have done a protocol coz a lot of the intro & methods are just C&P.
Random MNer said what I do isn't " real writing ", mind.

From no data to submission of a recent paper, 5 authors of which 1 didn't do a lot and I was the only (mostly) full-timer, recently took just < 6 weeks. 3 weeks of which was 2 other authors madly rewriting each other's words & me keeping out of their way.

It boggles my mind how difficult journals make it to find their conventions about supplementary materials. Everything I write has an appendix, ffs. I dislike wasting so much time figuring out the formatting (ffs).

In my discipline, probably a month and that would feel very speedy, and would be sold authorship as my colleagues wouldn't stand for that level of swiftness! But in my field it's all about making grand theoretical contributions.

I’m fucked. It would take me a couple of months (Humanities). Although I do tend to do more research as I write—my ideas evolve as I write so it’s quite normal for me to stop and re-think where I’m going with it + a bit more reading/research.