Latest review
First review round: 25.7 weeks. Overall rating: 0 (very bad).
Outcome: Accepted.
Motivation:
First and last experience with this journal. Every step in the process took a long time. The editor-in-chief (EIC) was clearly a major part of the problem. Sometimes the review comments were submitted but I had to wait for two or more weeks to receive the decision--which was literally sending the comments of the reviewer without any other addition.
Before submitting the article, I asked the journal and I was given a reasonable, estimated timeline to receive the final decision. but, it took almost more than three months for the journal to find a reviewer. The paper was finally reviewed by only one reviewer. The reviewer was also the least professional reviewer I've ever worked with. In the first round, we received some reasonable comments which were fully addressed. In the second round, which took a significant amount of time, the same reviewer picked some other parts of the article and provided completely new arguments that were not even helpful--didn't he read the article completely in the first round? These were parts that had no connections to his first comments.
We finally received the acceptance email on Oct 17 after three revisions. About a month later, there was still no single email from the journal about the next step and production... so given that by then I had learned that the journal is super slow in everything, I started to email the editorial office hoping to have a 2018 publication out of this work. The secretary sent contact info of two IEEE proofreaders handling the article. I emailed them, but almost a month later after many follow-up emails, they finally replied and said we have not received your paper as an accepted paper from the journal. Getting back to the EIC, it seems that he is first waiting to figure what issue they want to fit the paper in before moving forward with the production--and clearly the secretary had no clue whatsoever what the EIC was doing and who is responsible for the next step.
The only thing that I know now (Dec 1, 2018) is that the paper will not appear online in any form until they figure out the issue number! Seriously!? Most journals these days put the article online shortly after a proofreading with an in-press status. The EIC clarified that this will happen in 2019, but no specific date was given (remember, the paper received acceptance on Oct 17, 2018!).
Anyway, my first and last experience with this journal (and the IEEE family). Very unprofessional handling of a submission and lack of transparency and commitment from day one! Consider other venues for publishing your research.
