Latest review
First review round: 17.4 weeks. Overall rating: 0 (very bad).
Outcome: Accepted.
Motivation:
Manuscript took a while to get accepted and took forever to find reviewers. In the end, they found reviewers which gave decent feedback and improved the quality of the manuscript. While the review process itself isn't bad, the journals management was horrendous. For example, they charged the manuscript to my department (which they paid) and confirmed the receipt to me. 2 months later, they sent an invoice saying the payment has not been made. When I told them that and forwarded the details to them, they claimed that they needed more details (like what other details do you need?). Worst of all, they were very lacklustre to even try and locate the payment that has already been made and confirmed by them. When I told them of whom the payment was made from, they simply said "Can you provide details like credit card to confirm?", saying that "We get a lot of manuscripts from [my institution] and therefore it will be difficult for us to locate the payment". You mean to tell me you don't keep track of who and payments and to what manuscript the payment was made to? You simply took the money? They expected me to go and get my department's credit card and provide them details to them. Anyone with a brain cell knows that no department will do that. If not I will just save the details into my account and charge them for anything and everything.
To make matters worse, I left the institute when this happened, so this further complicated matters, of which scientific reports did not seem to bother to care.