Journal title
Dur. 1st rev. rnd
Tot. handling time
Imm. rejection time
Num. rev. reports
Report quality
Overall rating
Outcome
Motivation:
The review time was long, yet I only received reviews from one reviewer. The review was not detailed and the majority of it was a summary of what was presented in the paper. The editor held back from making a decision for 2 months and although the reviewer comments were not negative, the editor decided to reject the paper without providing any reasons.
Over the past 6 years this has been the worst journal I have dealt with. I feel like they wasted my time...
Over the past 6 years this has been the worst journal I have dealt with. I feel like they wasted my time...
Motivation:
Reviewers comments did not help me to improve the paper. Their comments indicated a possible lack of understanding of the problem, methodology and the solution. The editor who supervised the review, followed the reviewers decision.
Motivation:
The mail informing about the decision mentioned that my paper is not suitable for Research Policy and wished me luck in submission with other journals. No reasons were given. 20 weeks is too long a time for such a comment.
Motivation:
Handling Editor-in-Chief changed during the review process (8 months after 1st submission) and thus, there was another set of new reviews which was unnecessary. EiC should've completed the decision process before stepping down. Not very professional I must say.
Motivation:
Neuroimage (NI) is arguably the top journal in the area of Neuroimaging. Although my proposed methodology was appreciated, the writing style was suggested for further improvement. I didn't see any strong negative comments from the reviewers. I guess NI is focused on maintaining a very high rejection rate.
Motivation:
The rejection letter to the resubmitted manuscript, which was revised according to reviewer comments after the first round of peer review, stated that the subject matter was not of interest to the broader readership of the journal.This being the case, it would have been preferable if the manuscript had been rejected immediately after first being submitted to the journal which would have saved us at least 6 months. Now we have to begin the process of submission again with another journal.
Motivation:
First round of reviews took 6 months. Reviews were of somewhat OK quality, pointing towards major revisions. Editor did not bother to comment or synthesize reviews, but rejected with a one-line comment.
Motivation:
The overall process was relatively fast. The manuscript was assigned to three different referees, nevertheless their background on the topic studied in the manuscript was apparently poor and resulted in several naive comments. I do not know if the journal's policy, regarding its broad readership, includes inviting not specialized reviewers, however, we finally got only a minimal feedback, despite the three different reports we received. The manuscript was rejected because the reviews were "not positive enough". We ended up surprised, not by the rejection per se, but by the unexpectedly low quality of the reviews.
Motivation:
The review reports were candid and constructive. The quality of the manuscript definitely improved from the initial submission. It is worth the wait!
Motivation:
The manuscript was rejected by the Editorial Board after almost 7 months. During this period I kindly asked to have some communication by the Editor but I never had any reply. According to the Journal web site, the manuscript was under review, but the communication by the Editor in Chief simply said that “the Editorial Board has evaluated the manuscript unacceptable for publication in our journal”. No additional comment or reason was provided or available on the website.
Motivation:
Very good communication with the Editor. Also, the Editor gives details from the beginning about the period necessary for reviewing the manuscript and kept it. It offers a large variety of possibilities for the topics. A little bit too long to wait for answers from the reviewers, but communication with the Editor compensates this problem.
23.7 weeks
42.3 weeks
n/a
2 reports
Accepted
Motivation:
Too much long review process. More than an year to see the paper published.
Motivation:
Extremely rapid. Valuable comments.
Motivation:
The editor seemed to have had little bagage to either select appropriate reviewers, or evaluate the quality of the reviews. The whole process took ages (of which nearly a month just to decide whether to send out for review). Over a month after formally going into review a former colleague of mine (one with whom I have published previously) was asked to review the manuscript. One single Google action by the editor would have made it clear that this is not an appropriate request given our previous ties. It seems to me that the only reason my colleague got this request was because he has a study in revision with Nature Communications so that his name was in their system. Naturally he reclined and apparently a different reviewer was invited. The reviews I ended up getting were of poor quality, attacking points that were very explicitly controlled for in the study. I did not read a single point of valid criticism by any of the reviewers. I've decided taking my business elsewhere, I will not be submitting with Nature Communications again, the turnaround time for a high impact journal is huge (even though they pride themselves on being fast), and the editor does not seem up to speed in our field (Cognitive Neuroscience).
Motivation:
Paper submission management system is fast and effective.
Motivation:
Quick feedback from editor and reviewers, except for the final decision.
Relevant comments in general
Relevant comments in general
Motivation:
Good reviews in reasonable delay
Motivation:
The paper was sent to peer-review and the process took more than 3 months. One of the reviewers provided a sustained feedback which revealed an attentive reading of our paper, highlighting many flaws which we were able to correct thanks to him/her and prepare the paper for further submission to another journal. The second reviewer however was sarcastic and very condescending. He/She provided a two line review stating that the paper had a major methodological flaw which made it unworthy of further comments. When submitting a paper to peer review in a top journal, we expect to get a report based on a objective reading of the paper and not on reviewer's "methodological ideologies". Through the provided report, it was obvious that the reviewer in question did not even read the paper thoroughly and just decided it was unworthy of even considering it.
Motivation:
The reviews were good, but it was the work of the very knowledgeable and capable editorial board that really helped improving this manuscript during the review process. The editors managed to keep the balance between the opinions of the reviewers and our intentions as authors, and worked actively to make the manuscript fit for publication.