Dur. 1st rev. rnd
Tot. handling time
Imm. rejection time
Num. rev. reports
Report quality
Overall rating
Outcome
Year
6.1 weeks
14.0 weeks
n/a
2 reports
4
1
Rejected
2022
Motivation: The first round of reviews was productive and up to standard. The second round of reviews was a failure in all respects. Only a single reviewer provided a report and in that report 4 comments were included, three of which had to do with very minor typos/editorial changes. There was a single comment requesting similar changes to what was already done after the first round of reviews. The Associate Editor then took the decision to reject the paper based on this single (not very critical) review.
5.6 weeks
6.1 weeks
n/a
3 reports
1
2
Accepted
2023
Motivation: The first reviews was provided us in few months which one of it suggests us only to change some typos and cite his works. Than after 5 months (we sent many mails to remember) they sent us 3 short reviews with other reviewers (the previous one probably didn't show up), that suggested which one of it suggested us to reduce the number of references and the length of the paper. At least the paper is published but the quality of the reviews and the time spent waiting the response for us was to excessive.
16.7 weeks
18.9 weeks
n/a
2 reports
5
5
Accepted
2023
35.3 weeks
35.3 weeks
n/a
1 reports
1
1
Rejected
2022
Motivation: They kept my paper in the review process for 9 months while the only review of my paper was done four months before. If they were going to reject the article, they should have rejected it four months ago and not wasted my time.
The review of the article was limited to a few writing problems and it was clear that the reviewer was not very familiar with the topic of the article.
73.9 weeks
73.9 weeks
n/a
3 reports
1
0
Rejected
2021
Motivation: First review round took 73.9 weeks (17 months)! Moreover, during that time period the corresponding author inquired the status of the manuscript five (5) times using the publisher's submission system option. These inquiries were never answered. The manuscript was progressed towards the decision only when the senior author of the manuscript send personal email to the Editor in chief. The two of the received reviews were obviously very short (256 and 168 words long respectively), quickly written and generic (not referring to details in the manuscript). I do not advise colleagues to send papers to Expert Systems With Applications.
7.4 weeks
49.9 weeks
n/a
2 reports
2
1
Accepted
2021
9.0 weeks
15.3 weeks
n/a
2 reports
0
0
Rejected
2021
Motivation: Finalizing a decision based on the comments of a single reviewer based on a few benchmark results with regard to its all round performance following days of testing and validation and the inability and untimely action of the associate editor raises many questions. The reviewers are absolutely useless with their generalized comments (Most comments are very vague with the comment that a very huge gap exists between the results and conclusion for a manuscript of about 90 pages with 50K words) and expecting the duck to lay golden eggs without feeding it properly.
6.0 weeks
25.3 weeks
n/a
2 reports
1
1
Rejected
2019
n/a
n/a
15 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2019
n/a
n/a
17 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2018
60.6 weeks
65.1 weeks
n/a
2 reports
5
5
Rejected
2018
Motivation: In the review reports it was so clear that the reviewers invested serious time and effort with both initial and revised version of the manuscript. Frankly, I was surprised what details they were noticing, like: at one paragraph I've referenced wrong source by accident (Mendeley for LibreOffice has tricky interface), a reviewer noticed that the source does not correspond to the sentence where the citation was. To provide right perspective: the revised version of the paper had 108 references and more than 25k words, the paragraph is in the middle of the paper, covering less relevant aspect of the research - it wasn't part of the main chapters! This is what I perceive as top level professionalism! Here, don't get it wrong: it was one of very few objections being technical/formal in nature - the majority of the remarks were very concrete objections on the methodology, adopted methods, design decisions.... really, to produce such feedback you have to read the paper carefully and not only once. How hard it was to follow and understand the initial version - I became fully aware few months later, when had to translate it and integrate in the PhD thesis. If my head was exploding - then it couldn't be an easy task for the reviewers. In addition, they were not giving just objections / points that have to be improved, but also few very constructive ideas / directions / advises. Also, it is worth to mention that there was significant overlap in objections given by two reviewers - unlike with some other journal where I got conflicting requests in the same review iteration.

Related to the question on rejection motivation, I would expand on the selected answer:
+ changes were not significant enough for several points (cca: 2/10) (here I left out "considered" intentionally, as I do agree with the reviewers - the revision deadline forced me sent it unpolished)
+ with revision, two new objections surfaced (the reviewers really gave solid arguments why these are critical, couldn't agree more - once they made me aware in the feedback)
+ the research is interesting (all parties stated it in both review iterations), but it was clear even to me that theoretical contribution is not that significant

(btw. the latest IF of the journal is around 4!). As a reviewer well noticed in the second feedback: "combination of several practical and basic steps, ... ... with some improvements... but can't be considered as a solid contribution...".

Despite being rejected (both reviewers clearly stated in the second feedback that it should be rejected - with very sound arguments), I can't find anything negative in the whole review process. Only criticism that I could state is about the submission web interface/system, that is outdated and very buggy: it accepts only obsolete document formats, provides step by step instructions that are confusing and conflicting to each other. It took, in total - for both submissions - more than 12 hours to get proper PDF document for my final approval (note that I'm using LibreOffice, not MS Office - so, it was probably huge part of the adventure) - but that is, in fact, the issue of the publisher's older version of submission system. Regarding the editorial board and the reviewers: it is the most professionally carried out review process - out of four I've experienced in the last two years (all journals had IF above 1). With some other journals, I had reviewers that were reading "diagonally" - even abstract - more than half of their objections were simply: not true (it happens when you do not really read the text in front of you). So, such dramatic difference between this journal and them - is my main motivation to invest time and write all of this.
n/a
n/a
9 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2018
n/a
n/a
8 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2017
Motivation: my very this paper after publication in other journal got cited by a paper of this journal within a month & they told me NOT FIT !!!!
22.6 weeks
22.6 weeks
n/a
2 reports
1
1
Rejected
2017