Dur. 1st rev. rnd
Tot. handling time
Imm. rejection time
Num. rev. reports
Report quality
Overall rating
Outcome
Year
28.4 weeks
28.4 weeks
n/a
1 reports
2
3
Rejected
2022
Motivation: Too long waiting time until the article is sent to reviewers, and rejection decision.
n/a
n/a
79 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2020
Motivation: This journal is in melt-down. I was written to a few weeks ago to say there had been a huge backlog in dealing with submissions and an 'internal problem'. Now I get a desk reject with no reason provided. Unless you have 8 weeks to waste, I highly recommend that you do NOT submit anything to this journal. Appalling behaviour really.
16.7 weeks
16.7 weeks
n/a
1 reports
0
0
Rejected
2015
Motivation: After waiting for 4 months, received a review of cca. 30 words, telling me that my stats "were wrong because I am claiming that my correlations are low, but significant (r=0.2, p<0.05), while in fact they are high, because of a high number of respondents (N=232)". After receiving this, I sent an email to the editor, pointing out the very low level of quality of the review (and not asking for a second review). The editor responded the same day with a very rude and unprofessional email.
30.9 weeks
30.9 weeks
n/a
3 reports
1
1
Rejected
2017
Motivation: First, I would like to apologize to readers for my imperfect English.
The review process was very disappointing due to reviewers' comments, who rejected the paper with a very vague justification of 'not beeing geographic enough'; event. 'not fitting the journal of Applied Geography'. In fact, the paper aimed at multilevel analysis of factors related to adolescent substance use with a specific focus on both international levels and country-specific millieu (Czechia). Thus, I believe the paper employed geographic aspects as an explicit subject. At the same time, the paper tried to make some recommendations for drug policy; thus, the paper was 'applied' as well.
In the paper, a detailed discussion on several issues directly related to the research subject were provided (ca. 20 pages long manuscript). However, the 2 reviewers who advised rejection of the paper in the first round provided very brief comments of ca. 5-6 sentences. The commentaries did not pointed to any issues related to the text itself; therefore, the reviewers' professional background related to the manuscript subject made questionable impression. For completeness I also note that the commentary from the 3rd reviewer was just the opposite to the previous two reviewers. The rewiever 3 simply adviced for a direct acceptance of the paper with no other changes (the review comment of a total of 3 sentences).
61.9 weeks
61.9 weeks
n/a
2 reports
5
0
Rejected
2018
Motivation: Extremely long handling time and very poor communication. The editor never replied to my enquiries which I found very unprofessional. The journal manager replied to my enquiries but could not give detailed information about the delay. Overall a very bad experience although I have to admit that the final review reports are of high quality.
9.3 weeks
18.1 weeks
n/a
3 reports
4
0
Rejected
2016
Motivation: The revised manuscript was not sent out to the same reviewers even though we feel that we had addressed all the concerns raised by the original reviewers. The new reviewer had very short comments in one paragraph for the basis of his/her rejection.
Drawn back before first editorial decision after 260.0 days
Drawn back
2016
Motivation: In the first 4 months, there were no updates to our manuscript. After contacting the editor, we found out that there were some issues in the editorial submission system, and that the manuscript was "stuck" for 4 months. We were told, that the matter will be solved and that the manuscript will be considered for review.

After additional 3 months, we contacted the editor again, as there were still no updates. We did not get any reply from the editor. We waited for another month, and contacted them again, again without any replies. Together with the co-authors, we decided we will withdraw the paper (8 months without any updates was a bit too much). After we withdrew it, we got an email of one of the assistants, that one reviewer actually did submit a review already, and that they were still trying to get a second review. This made us unhappy, as we made several inquiries in the months 4-8 after the submission about the state of the review, without any response.

We also withdrew it, as we spoke to two different researchers who also submitted two separate manuscripts to Applied Geography in the same time. One got her paper published (but her manuscript was also "stuck" in the first 4 months, which makes me to believe there was no error in the submission system). The other also withdrew a paper after 6 months of no updates.

So to sum it up:
- 4 months before the paper was actually sent to reviewers
- additional 3-4 months of waiting and in between no responses from the editors although we submitted 2-3 inquiries on the state of the manuscript
- withdrawing the paper after 8 months, after which we received an email that one of the reviews was actually already done

The statistics for the journal in terms of the speed of the publishing process are actually good, and I wonder if our example will be considered in the statistics at all.