Journal title
Dur. 1st rev. rnd
Tot. handling time
Imm. rejection time
Num. rev. reports
Report quality
Overall rating
Outcome
Motivation:
The review process was quite long. Reviewer #2 improved the quality of the manuscript, making interesting comments, highlighting typing errors and suggesting a better organization of the text. On the contrary, Reviewer #1 did not add useful comments and argued that English language should be improved. It was funny to notice that Reviewer #2 placed at least 5 English language mistakes in its review made of 185 words.
Motivation:
Extremely slow, but they said one of the reviewers was late. Acceptance email said 8-10 months publication queue, so it won't be out soon.
Motivation:
Both reviewers seemed to have taken their role seriously. They gave detailed feedback. I interpret the circumstance that the journal found good reviewers as an indicator of a good reputation.
Motivation:
The second round of revisions occurred during COVID-19, therefore there were delays in getting the information back. Despite the Editors external obligations, the review and decision arrived within a reasonable timeframe all things considered.
Motivation:
Manuscript was considered not fit for journal
Motivation:
Overall would not recommend trying to publish in this journal.
* The aims and scope of this journal are not clearly stated. It seems to be in the area of plant science, but from the review comments, it seems to want to be in the field of agricultural engineering as well. In that case, it would be better to try and publish in journals such as CompAg or Bio-systems Engineering.
* Too much time (more than 1 month) for the paper status to change to "under review"
* The reviews were written in very poor English.
* The aims and scope of this journal are not clearly stated. It seems to be in the area of plant science, but from the review comments, it seems to want to be in the field of agricultural engineering as well. In that case, it would be better to try and publish in journals such as CompAg or Bio-systems Engineering.
* Too much time (more than 1 month) for the paper status to change to "under review"
* The reviews were written in very poor English.
Motivation:
My article (a Query) was accepted within two weeks. I was not provided with copies of any reviews. The editorial assistant confirmed that it had indeed undergone peer review, but that detailed reviews are not always necessary for Queries.
Motivation:
We were very disappointed with the editorial handling of our manuscript. Every step of the process took very long, and the choice of reviewers was problematic, as two out of the three reviewers were clearly no experts in the field. The production process after acceptance was bad as well, as they've made lots of errors in text and formulas (and even changes to images!), which were definitely not present in the original manuscript. In my opinion, such an editorial handling is not acceptable, especially from a journal with professional full-time editors and horrendous publishing fees.
Motivation:
The editor is very responsible for the manuscript reviewing process and replies every decisions and question quickly. Also, the editor not only considers reviewers' opinions but also assesses the opinions by fully reading the manuscript and then give a fair judge.
Motivation:
Withdrew manuscript from journal due to inordinate delays after 18 months. It was an invited paper for a special issue by guest editors. Unfortunately, the guest editors were not able to make definitive editorial decisions but were required to have all decisions cleared by the editor in chief. Some of the papers eventually published in the special issue were in review for 2 years.
Motivation:
Decision after first review was quick and comments helpful. Time from submission to publication could have been quicker if we had submitted the revised manuscript sooner. Time from acceptance to online publication also very quick.
Motivation:
The reviews were relevant, detailed and insightful. I believe our manuscript is improved as a result of the review processes. The journal editors were helpful, and available. The editorials decisions were quickly made.
Motivation:
Nearly 3 weeks to get a desk rejection was a bit long, but during the COVID pandemic, it's understandable. The manuscript to evaluated by an associate editor who found that the scale of the study was far too small to support our generalisations.
10.6 weeks
11.6 weeks
n/a
3 reports
Accepted
Motivation:
The manuscript was improved and the procedure was relatively quick.
Motivation:
Rapid rejection. The manuscript was discussed with the editorial board who did not consider that it represented a development of sufficient importance to warrant publication in this journal. They discussed our manuscript with the editorial board of a sister journal (Communications Biology) who offered to send it to peer-review should we accept the transfer.
6.3 weeks
15.9 weeks
n/a
3 reports
Accepted
Motivation:
The review process is very timely. The overall feedback was good. The best part is double blind review process, which is not there in many reputed journals. Sometimes papers are rejected/ accepted due to bias towards authors in single blind process.
4.4 weeks
10.0 weeks
n/a
3 reports
Rejected
Motivation:
Review rounds were speedy which I appreciate. Some reviewers were very good and others were not. The second round was a bit of a waste of time because they brought up new issues that were not raised the first time and were not related to the revisions, so that was irritating.
Motivation:
The overall review process was fast. I thank the editor and editorial team for their prompt work despite the difficult circumstances.
Motivation:
As participants in a workshop's shared task, we were specifically solicited to submit a journal article for a special issue arranged by the workshop organizers. An earlier version of our paper had therefore already undergone a round of peer reviews for publication in the workshop proceedings. The submission requirements for the journal did not give too much extra space for new material, which probably explains why the reviews we got were fairly positive and did not identify too many areas for improvement. The editors asked us to prepare a camera-ready submission incorporating the reviewers' suggestions (or at least, those that were practical), along with a response to the reviews, but this camera-ready submission was published without going through another round of reviews.
Motivation:
The review process was very fast. The editor also suggested another journal to submit our article. I am very happy with the quick response and the editor's answer.
Motivation:
The time to a desk reject was quite long, however, it was during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic which may have delayed everything. The Associate Editor read my paper carefully and gave a careful explanation of the rejection. I was told approximately 85% of papers are rejected.
Motivation:
They are very unprofessional. After 8 months of revising paper we received email that they can't find reviewers. So, our overall experience is to avoid this journal.
Motivation:
The review was fast. But that was about it.
Motivation:
While many of the reviewers comments were fair some were fairly naive. One reviewer complained about how recent the references used were but due to the nature of the paper this was a necessity. Overall the biggest issue with the journal was the time taken for initial reviews to come back. I appreciate this was initially over the holiday season but almost 6 months to hear anything back is far too long.
Motivation:
very quick editorial turn around. despite not being what we had hoped for, we appreciated the efficient handling
Motivation:
The manuscript should be refined for English grammatical structure and phraseology. The manuscript should be polished by an English linguist or language service (note in marked-up copy text where changes are made). Details of author-pays services can be found, for example, at: http://nativeenglishedit.com/
Motivation:
This review was for a special issue, so the peer review schedule was compressed. The reviews were received within three months of the special issue deadline, which I consider timely. There were three reviews and the reviewers were obviously knowledeable about the domain. Even though the submission was rejected, the reasons for rejection were clearly motivated based on the reviewers' specific comments. Even though they recommended rejection, the reviewers gave constructive feedback that gives concrete directions for going forward. Although not the desired outcome, an overall respectable review process.
Motivation:
The reviewers were not particularly helpful (note: it might be due to sheer chance in reviewer selection this one time, and not reflecting the general quality of reviewers for this journal). The positive review was basically a single paragraph to the effect of "this is a great paper worth publishing". The negative review criticized my draft for presumably failing to address alternative theories x, y, z, all of which I had actually discussed and explicitly refuted in the draft. Luckily the editor was quite reasonable, giving me an opportunity to respond to the negative review, and accepted the draft upon relatively minor revisions.
Motivation:
We got such a reply" Unfortunately, the reviewer comments are not positive enough to support publication of the paper in Science Advances. Although we recognize that you might be able address many of the criticisms noted in the reviews, the overall nature of the comments is such that we believe that the manuscript would not make the final cut for publication. We are therefore letting you know that we are rejecting the manuscript and hope that, nonetheless, you find the review comments helpful in preparing your work for submission to another journal". Regrettably, we found that comments are superficial, lack a lot of deep scientific understanding with bias. Therefore, we criticized that decision of rejection based on the apparent bias in the sole reviewer's comments, starting even from a wrong understating of the title to the end of his comments. The comments refer to the inexperience of the reviewer to the core of the topic. We have anxious regarding that high ranking journal with depending on only one reviewer who is not an expert on the submitted research field. We also complained from the long-editorial time, negligence of many inquire emails, un-updating the tracking system. Hereafter, the appeal rejected. We are so sad for wasting our time.