Journal title
Dur. 1st rev. rnd
Tot. handling time
Imm. rejection time
Num. rev. reports
Report quality
Overall rating
Outcome
Motivation:
We waited several months for the first decision. The editorial assistants were responsive and informed us that a review was received and they are still waiting for another review. Ultimately, we decided to withdraw the paper. Because BMJ Open has an open review process, we requested the reviews of Reviewer 1. They sent us the review, which we used to modify the paper. We resubmitted our paper to a different journal (which took only 6 weeks to get 4 reviewers!). I don't recommend submitting a manuscript to this journal.
Motivation:
Reviews were helpful. The whole submission process was smooth. The authors have the option to make the review history public. The data and code must be uploaded to a repository to make the results more transparent. Highly recommended publisher!
Motivation:
It took some time to get the initial decision but the reviews were very helpful.
Motivation:
The reviewers asked for additional comparative analysis. Total handling time is fast.
Motivation:
The review was fast. The reviewers asked for additional theoretical analysis. The manuscript improved significantly after two rounds of reviews. The editorial assistant handling our manuscript responds quickly when we have queries regarding our manuscript.
Motivation:
The reviewers made up bunch of false and superficial comments and claims about the work that were not accurate to any degree or related to the work by any way. The reviewers seemed highly biased. Some of the rewievers comments also were obviously copy pasted from an another reviewer they have done as the content of these comments and the terminology used in the comments had no relation to our work.
Motivation:
Totally terrible experience. i.m rejection without an informed email. 5/9 Submitted to the journal. 12/9 To advisor. 1/10 Rejection. We sent a email at 26/9, but got no response. We saw the rejection status on the website, but did not received a rejected email. Unless you have a strong backgroud, don't bother a submission.
Motivation:
The review process took too much time relative to the simplicity of revisions being suggested. There was also a point where the Journal had to find a new editorial board member to handle our manuscript. The dates received, accepted and published appearing in the paper make it appear that the struggle to keep up with the peer review process was on us authors when, in fact, much of the covered period of time is mostly us waiting for the Journal to relay reviewer feedback and editorial decision.
Motivation:
we were confident the topic, the article quality and the study would be of interest to the journal. But after 3 weeks, without explanation, our article bounced back. Editorial team did not provide reasons and suggested other journals for transfer, not really relevant or with decent impact.
This was disappointing but this happens, of course.
Refusal could have come quicker, we would have been able to submit to another journal earlier.
This was disappointing but this happens, of course.
Refusal could have come quicker, we would have been able to submit to another journal earlier.
Motivation:
The journal timeline is a bit deceiving. They keep returning the manuscript back as "unsubmitted" so each time you revise and resubmit the submission date is a new date. That is why the average review time on the website is 10 days, otherwise, it takes several MONTHS which is not an issue at all. I mean, the goal is to have publications of high quality. But using a "trick" to the keep review time short put me off.
Motivation:
The paper was reviewed carefully by the reviewer. The reviewer's comments were very helpful.
The rejection was made by the associate editor who didn't give insightful or constructive comments. The comments were humiliating and showed no experience in the field.
The rejection was made by the associate editor who didn't give insightful or constructive comments. The comments were humiliating and showed no experience in the field.
Motivation:
Ver fast review, multiple reviewers (>2), easy system to handle the comments. Comments were helpful to improve the manuscript.
Motivation:
Very fast and thorough review, excellent comments to improve the manuscript. Reviewers were well known experts in the field.
Motivation:
The reviewers' reports were very helpful and improved the quality of my paper. But after two rounds of blind reviews (by 3 reviewers), the editor said they were not happy with the quality of the reviewers so they started reviewing my manuscript on their own again and again until I decided to withdraw as it was the opposite of the concept and philosophy of "blind peer review".
Motivation:
The paper was desk-rejected very quickly (within one day). The editor stated that there is no contribution and that it is out of scope (not true as related papers are published all the time in the journal). Afterward, the paper was easily accepted in another top journal, so its quality and contribution were not an issue. Gatekeeping at its finest.
Motivation:
Very fast decision. Although, the arguments given were rather weird as this was not the scope of the paper. Lack of novelty is also very strange as this was the first study ever for the specific topic.
Motivation:
It was disappointing that the editor rejected the applied work based on something directly addressed in the associated (published) methods paper.
I suppose this illustrates that not all editors of this journal keep abridged of the state of the literature, and take shortcuts to reduce their workload.
I suppose this illustrates that not all editors of this journal keep abridged of the state of the literature, and take shortcuts to reduce their workload.
Motivation:
Our manuscript went through two rounds of peer review. After the second round, both anonymous reviewers suggested accepting the paper for publication. The editor, however, requested us to revise and resubmit for a 3rd round of peer review. We followed the instructions and resubmitted the paper after addressing his comments. After that, the editor went radio silent. He didn't bother to send the revised manuscript to external reviewers or respond to any of our emails. He did not even make an editorial decision. After months of waiting and not receiving a response, we ended up withdrawing the paper. Completely waste of time for the authors and reviewers. This is the most unprofessional and unethical behavior I've seen from any editorial team.
Motivation:
Refereeing process was fast, but referee's report was awful. Five lines of report showing that the referee has neither read nor understood the paper at all. S/he said we were working on metric measure spaces, while literally in the abstract it was written "throughout the paper the measure space will never be asked to be metric".
Motivation:
only received report C, referee did not understand main point of the paper, no reason given for rejection by editorial board, but at least took less than 5 months
Motivation:
The review process took an obscenely long time and resulted in rejection. It was not only a matter of difficulties in finding reviewers but the paper sat with the editor and administrators for 2-3 months at different points in the process. Many comments received may be helpful in improving the text for re-submission elsewhere. Others were outright rude or seemed to overlook the fact that the excessively long review process contributed to making our study outdated.
Motivation:
My email was purposely altered by journal editorial board staff, so that I could not log in to my Science advances account. No notice of that action was given. Apart from that review was unprofessional.
Motivation:
Overall we had a good experience with this journal altough the editors were a bit slow.
Motivation:
The status of the manuscript was "Manuscript under consideration" since the second day. After one month, we contacted the journal and asked for an update. They told us that the editor had not started looking at the paper. After 7 weeks, the status was still the same.
I think that NHB is a fantastic journal. It is a bit unfortunate, however, that takes is that long to decide if a paper fits or not.
I think that NHB is a fantastic journal. It is a bit unfortunate, however, that takes is that long to decide if a paper fits or not.
Motivation:
CrossRef check was applied to the whole manuscript (most probably including references) by journal staff and asked to revise the text after rejecting the paper three times which is quite strange and a waste of time (wasted more than two months). Software-generated similarity check report was requested multiple times by email but received no response. Poor handling and non-responsive Journal staff should be considered before submitting the paper to this journal.
Motivation:
Only 1 reviewer was found after 3 months which is a bit strange. The field of the research is rather broad so not sure why they were only able to find 1 reviewer. Paper was submitted to another journal and was published, with several reviewers (more than 2).
Motivation:
I really do not think that the editor (or the editorial board member) is doing his/her job. During the first round of the review, we got 2 excellent reviews and 1 highly critical review. The reviewer was definitely not qualified, she would not even know what a continuous variable is and she recommended papers which were not related to our paper at all. We cautioned the editor to read our responses to this reviewer carefully in a confidential note to the editor when we submitted the revised manuscript back to the journal. In the second round, we received 5 reviews (3 same from round 1 and 2 new reviewers). 2 of the initial reviewers liked the revisions (one of them had a not slight concern which was not scientific at all). The reviewer who created issues during the first round still objected the paper (she is highly unqualified). One of the two new reviewers liked the paper and the second one recommended a slight statistical change.
Summary:
I would never ever submit to this journal again... 5 reviews is a waste, especially given how hard it is to get reviewers nowadays and how unreliable reviews tend to be. Most of the five reviewers like the paper, and yet it’s still a rejection. The current world is one where you have to please five people to get an article accepted, meaning that controversial research has zero shot.
Summary:
I would never ever submit to this journal again... 5 reviews is a waste, especially given how hard it is to get reviewers nowadays and how unreliable reviews tend to be. Most of the five reviewers like the paper, and yet it’s still a rejection. The current world is one where you have to please five people to get an article accepted, meaning that controversial research has zero shot.
Motivation:
Terrible response times and little/no communication from editors. After 3 months post-submission with no status update I messaged the editors but only received an automated reply back that they can't respond to every query. I got the first response from reviewers only after 30 weeks. After revisions, the second response came after 20 weeks. After more revisions, third response came after 8 weeks (was finally accepted). Quality of reviews and fairness of editor(s) was good, but only consider this journal if you are prepared to wait 17 months for your paper to get published.
Motivation:
I regret to inform you that this topic is not of direct interest to CMP's intended audience. Mathematical physics is a vast field, and while we have tried to extend our coverage as much as possible, our scope is limited by the editorial board member's particular domains of interest. CMP has a substantial backlog of accepted papers. We are therefore forced to impose very strict standards. In particular, we need to select papers that are more in line with the core areas that are considered to be within the traditional scope of CMP. In an effort to reduce the backlog, we unfortunately cannot accept all of the good works that are submitted.
Motivation:
TP is a reasonably prestigious journal, but they took 4 months finding reviewers. By the time the paper is actually 'in press', it would have been > 7 months since submission. The reviewers' comments were OK, but didn't really add to the quality of the final product. Overall, given all of this and the ridiculous open access fees charged by Nature-springer for this journal (£3000), My lab won't be submitting here again. I can't justify the cost to the funders and the prestige of the journal isn't worth the long delays. I think Journal of Neuroscience (for an apprioriately neuroscience-focused psychiatry paper) or J Affective Disorders or Int J Neuropsychopharmacol are better options.
Motivation:
It took 35 days for our manuscript to be seen by an Editor only to decide upon a desk reject.
Motivation:
Apparently they reject 35% of manuscripts after internal review (too many submissions, reviewer fatigue), and ours was one of them. Feedback from editor was very precise and competent, but also just 4 sentences.
Motivation:
This feels like a template rejection letter without even properly reading the MS. How does one infer that? Here is how. It has been 2.4 weeks since we submitted the MS and like all other reviews, we get the same reply. At this point, the editorial reviews are just pointing towards its new open-access sub-journals, which in this case is the one mentioned above, in their reply. ALso kindly see the details of the editor who replies. Pretty sure they are not working on any similar field.
Motivation:
Comments from reviewers concerned the global understanding and quality of English of the article, extending the literature references with pertinent suggestions.
Motivation:
the decision letter mentioned their "goals in publishing high impact results".
Motivation:
I feel the decision was subjective