Journal title
Dur. 1st rev. rnd
Tot. handling time
Imm. rejection time
Num. rev. reports
Report quality
Overall rating
Outcome
Motivation:
The time it took to get an answer was to long considering that the journal has a low impact factor. Before submission there was no way to find out how long the process would take. Some of the reviewers comments were offensive.
Motivation:
Disappointing as they encouraged a submission in the first place.
Motivation:
The review process was very slow and frustrating here, and required frequent outreach from us to move things along. It took 18 months after addressing minor revisions for our manuscript to be accepted. To be fair, I know that 9 months after we submitted the revision we got a new editor. But we couldn't understand why it took another 9 months for the new editor to see that we had addressed the minor revisions and it was suitable for publication. When we emailed for updates the reply was always that they could provide no estimates of how much longer it would take. In the end it was accepted which we appreciated. I would not submit here again unless I'd heard they had changed their editorial process.
Motivation:
11 weeks for editorial rejection, but with referral to another journal.
Motivation:
The quality of the reviews I received was quite high and they generally made the manuscript better. However, authors should beware that the journal is experiencing a lot of delays and should expect each step to take longer than the timelines they advertise on their website.
Motivation:
Professional handling, but a bit slow. This is understandable though given covid related issues.
Motivation:
Because we receive more than 18,000 submissions every year, incoming manuscripts undergo an initial evaluation by a member of the Editorial Board, who is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, to determine whether the potential novelty, impact, and relevance in the broad scientific community merit further detailed technical review. In your case, our assessment is that your manuscript does not meet one or more of the principal aims of our journal and on this basis we expect that the likelihood that detailed review will lead to publication is low.
This decision is necessarily subjective and does not reflect an evaluation of the technical quality of your work or of its appropriateness for a more specialized audience; accordingly, we wish you success in finding a more suitable venue for publication soon.
This decision is necessarily subjective and does not reflect an evaluation of the technical quality of your work or of its appropriateness for a more specialized audience; accordingly, we wish you success in finding a more suitable venue for publication soon.
Motivation:
The review process was a bit longer than in ACS or RSC, but the Editor was helpful and tried to accelerate it. The reviewers were fair, constructive and they helped improve the paper. I will consider this journal as a publication platform in the future as well and I recommend it for others, too.
Motivation:
Generic desk rejection after 2.6 weeks with their editorial team. It’s disappointing to have a our work sitting with this editor for such a long time and came back with a rejection. I think nature communication should have more savvy editorial staff to assess manuscripts. Among all of the publishers I’ve interacted with, this team is by far the worst experience.
Motivation:
The journal handled the manuscript in very good time, informed about every step and very appropriate reviewers were selected. One reviewer was more clinical and one more biological as such was the nature of the manuscript.
Motivation:
I have published several articles in Hindawi publishing. Due to my good previous experience with Hindawi publication, I sent all four of my manuscripts to journals related to Hindawi, and suspiciously the process was the same for all my manuscripts. But, recently, my country has become a low-income country, and a full waiver is automatically applied. Since then, I have noticed a difference in their manuscript handling. For example, I have submitted my manuscript, and they seemed to fail to find an academic editor for the manuscript. Then around 3 months after submission, an email is sent to me, and ask whether I want to continue the process or not as they claim that they have failed to find any academic editor to oversee my manuscript. They find an academic editor as soon as I reply yes. After a week or so, the academic editor rejects the manuscript due to technical reason, which is not consistent with the quality of the journal. I think it is only due to the full waiver policy.
Motivation:
One of the reviewers seemed to have little or no understanding of the modelling, did not read, or simply did not understand the statistical models. The other reviewer wanted citations to lines and lines of references to datasets and articles, many of which we had explicitly rejected or moved on from. If we had cited every single one of these articles, it would have added thousands of words. The review was simply a gatekeeping/genuflection exercise to 'authority', not an attempt at social science.
Motivation:
This journal is rather quaint. It does not seem to have a transparent and robust reviewing process, as far as I can tell. Articles are circulated amongst the 'editors', much like a pre-war gentlemen's club, checking to see if she is 'one of us'. The single review we received - which was unclear as to who it was from - was inadequate. It suggested some things we have already done (actually in sub-titles!), and then made some irrelevant references to 1970s-era and vaguely Marxist state theory. The paper we should note was not about state theory. The review then made some dismissive comments about 'lay' approaches, which seem to be approaches and rhetoric actually used by government and development agencies as far as I can tell; presumably opposed to those used by the clergy/scholastics/Gnostics. The journal seems adverse to engaging with policy as it is practiced and/or described in the field, despite its 'development' in the title and claim to be multi-disciplinary.
Motivation:
Editorial, so not peer reviewed, but efficient internal review.
Motivation:
Overall the review process was very smooth. A few things could be improved, e.g. the requirement to put figures at the end of the manuscript (without the captions) instead of inside the body.
Motivation:
Very details editorial comments along with the review and short turn around time to resubmit but was given extensions when requested
Motivation:
The editor in charge gave 1 sentence all-too-terse overview, basically along the line of the reviewers are unhappy and you need to satisfy them in the first round. No specific focus from the editor. One reviewer seemed neutral to positive and suggestions/criticisms very addressable. The 2nd reviewer gave very short review that the paper didn't account for the vast sociology literature without citing a single book or paper. We revised the paper as best we could given the non-direction or impossible direction of citing all of the sociology literature. In the second review, the first reviewer became hypercritical but with no substantive criticisms, while the second reviewer recommended acceptance. The editor sided somehow with the first reviewer, and we can only conclude the editor never liked the paper. Would never submit another paper here. Reviews and editor capricious with no guidance provided.
Motivation:
Our manuscript was sent to 3 external reviewers. From all of them, we received quite detailed comments. The reviewers clearly read the manuscript thoroughly and thought about potential issues. We were happy about the reviews. We felt that it was not necessary to send the manuscript for the second round of revisions since the first decision was only a "minor revision" decision, and all reviewers seemed happy about it. Moreover, we provided detailed answers to all of the points raised by the reviewers. Nonetheless, the second round of reviews was relatively fast, so it was OK in the end.
Motivation:
The editor wrote a statement about how our study built on our previous work, but it wasn't enough of a conceptual advance. Didn't seem to have read the manuscript closely given that we are showing the current model is wrong and presenting a new one. Did recommend their transfer option to either Current Biology or Cell Reports.
4.0 weeks
6.1 weeks
n/a
30 reports
Accepted
Motivation:
Reviews were generally excellent, and one included a detailed replication on another dataset using our code. Decision was a bit slow on the second round given that the revisions we made were relatively minor (~3 months and with some prompting of the editor). The editor was a little bit under-opinionated and didn't give much guidance on which of the reviewers' comments – some of which were quite radical – would be considered vital for acceptance. Editor was very quick in the final round.
Motivation:
The rejection was reasoned and possibly saved us from a rejection at a later stage, but the time it took to get those reviews in is not OK.
Drawn back before first editorial decision after 245.0 days
Drawn back
Motivation:
After 8 months without identifying reviewers for the paper I decided to withdraw it. Funny how it literally took them 5 minutes from the email I sent (asking to withdraw the paper) to them validating the withdrawal.
Such a loss of time but that's what you get from these mediocre journals. Resubmitted elsewhere.
Such a loss of time but that's what you get from these mediocre journals. Resubmitted elsewhere.
26.0 weeks
43.4 weeks
n/a
3 reports
Accepted
Motivation:
We believe that our manuscript should have been given a chance to be revised and improved but it was not the case since the outcome was to reject.
Motivation:
There were 3 reviews that were extreme, 2 beside being impolite they were long and unstructured. 1 of them was very short and positive.
The editors did not point out which of the revisions were crucial for acceptance, as some of the reviewers comments were more "I would have done it differently" so we were not sure how much were we suppose to change.
The editors did not point out which of the revisions were crucial for acceptance, as some of the reviewers comments were more "I would have done it differently" so we were not sure how much were we suppose to change.
Motivation:
The editor politely rejected the manuscript, without sending to external peer reviewers. This is not unusual for high impact journals, however, the decision for editorial rejection took almost two months. This is a long delay which was likely avoidable and impacted negatively on the novelty of the results presented in the manuscript.
Editor's response:
"The unfortunate fact is that we receive many more papers than we can publish, which means we must decline a substantial proportion of manuscripts without sending them to referees, so that they may be sent elsewhere without delay. Decisions of this sort are made by the editors when it appears that papers - including those of high quality - are unlikely to succeed in the competition for limited space."
Editor's response:
"The unfortunate fact is that we receive many more papers than we can publish, which means we must decline a substantial proportion of manuscripts without sending them to referees, so that they may be sent elsewhere without delay. Decisions of this sort are made by the editors when it appears that papers - including those of high quality - are unlikely to succeed in the competition for limited space."
Motivation:
The Editor decided our manuscript was out of scope, although we provided many details how to valorize erucic acid, which is obtained only from industrial crops.