Journal title
Dur. 1st rev. rnd
Tot. handling time
Imm. rejection time
Num. rev. reports
Report quality
Overall rating
Outcome
Motivation:
I had a very bad experience with submitting in PLoS One. After 5 weeks of revision, we email the editor. She said that she had only one revision and she had asked more than eleven potential reviewers. The entire review process took very long time (11 weeks) and we received one bad revision and another consisting in two lines saying that our work was ok but already published somewhere but the reviewer did not include that reference.
Motivation:
Six months under review without any in-between note! The reviews were extremely weak. We could not basically learn anything useful from the reviews to improve the manuscript. The reviews were in the lines: May be your global study was biased? Why did not you include the data of the home country of the reviewer in your global data set?
Motivation:
"The work is well conducted, but it provides another example of [...]. There is a huge literature on this. The work is clearly publishable, but it is not what Ecology Letters is looking to publish"
Motivation:
"Although this work is interesting, it does not have the broad appeal needed for PNAS and is better suited for a more specialized journal"
Motivation:
Quick immediate rejection but reasons were unclear.
Motivation:
Rather quick immediate rejection (12 days) but much longer than other nature journals.
Motivation:
Benjamin Sovacool and his team are THE SUPREME journal editors. Quick turnaround time, personalized service, and excellent review quality. I knew that such quality was possible, but I had never seen it before in my 20 years in academia. HATS OFF to ERSS.
Motivation:
I have published in the journal more than once. The same thing on both occasions...effectively, five rounds of review on each occasion. I like the journal, but the review process is just burdensome. I would think twice about further submissions. It is one of those journals you have to "hit" once if you work in that area of research.
Motivation:
In the overall, review comments were fairly constructive and helpful. However, the editorial process was not that efficient. It took more than six months until the initial decision was rendered. Most of the time, the journal office could not find any AE who shall handle my manuscript and the initial decision was rendered by one of their in-house editors. The review process of the revised manuscript was not that better. The journal office spent nearly a couple of months to invite an AE. I had to email the journal office almost monthly to keep all the things not being forgotten and/or abandoned by the office staff.
Motivation:
Our initial experience was that although the reviewing process was a bit slow, we got very useful and constructive comments. After the second revision however, communication with the handling editor was sparse, and multiple emails had to be sent in order to get an update on our manuscript. In the last revision round the editor allowed at least 8 weeks before reviewer comments' submission, further delaying the process. After acceptance of our paper, there were another 6 months before the manuscript was published online, again due to difficulties in communication with the editor. We consider that our manuscript was not handled in the most professional way.
Motivation:
Although the process took an extended amount of time, I was happy with the way that the manuscript was handled. Incorporating reviewers' suggestions required a lot of work but were ultimately helpful and substantially improved my manuscript.
Motivation:
Manuscript was not considered fit for the journal.
Motivation:
the process was extremely fast, and both reviewers and editor were highly professional.
Motivation:
Since there was a contradiction between reviewers, we expected editors to solicit additional opinion about the manuscript from practicing scientists. They did not and eventually took a decision after discussing with other editorial colleagues.
Motivation:
We literally have paid for nothing by submitting to the Journal of Empirical Finance. I have the impression that the editor in charge of my paper has not even read it, as there was just a copy-pasted message suggesting that our paper was not fit for the readership of the journal. I am aware that high desk rejection rates are common in top journals, but what bothers are two issues: 1) not any feedback at all and 2) not even recommending for the article transfer service (ATS), which connecting 1 and 2, passes the impression of our work not being read at all. After paying high submission fees, a minor feedback would be expected if the work was minimaly evaluated.
Motivation:
Transfer of the manuscript from the server platform to the editor took about 1-2 days. Forwaring or decisions of the editor were done within 1 day.
Motivation:
We got a single short review asking us to shorten the manuscript and write a more focused discussion. It was clear that the reviewer had not read the paper in detail. For example, he/she identified several points made in the manuscript as being interesting. Half of these were actually just citing/explaining/discussing other people's work. Overall it was a very poor review. We resubmitting after shortening the manuscript by about 10% and the editor accepted it without further review.