Latest review
First review round: 4.3 weeks. Overall rating: 0 (very bad).
Outcome: Rejected.
Motivation:
My experience with the editorial handling was very poor. The manuscript was initially submitted on 26 December 2025 and went through two revision rounds. The second revision was submitted on 18 May 2026 and addressed only four remaining focused comments.
After this revision, the manuscript remained under review for several months without a clear editorial timeline. Multiple attempts were made by both the corresponding author and the supervisor to obtain information from the journal. A formal complaint was subsequently submitted to Springer Nature and escalated to the editorial team. Only after this escalation were we informed that a previous reviewer had been invited again and had apparently not yet accepted the invitation.
After almost nine months from the original submission, and without a reliable timeline for completion of the review process, we decided to withdraw the manuscript on 22 September 2026.
The main problem was not the scientific review itself, but the prolonged editorial handling and lack of communication. Based on this experience, I would not submit to this journal again.
