Journal title
Dur. 1st rev. rnd
Tot. handling time
Imm. rejection time
Num. rev. reports
Report quality
Overall rating
Outcome
Motivation:
The editorial decision was very quick, and since the editor considered the manuscript to be more relevant to a sister journal, a transfer offer was made by the editor
Motivation:
The editorial handing of our manuscript was unprofessional and extremely slow.
The whole process lasted 9 months. The editor received the reports from the reviewers after 4 months and sent it to us 1,5 months later. We made the changes according to the report of one of the reviewers and send our corrreted manuscript after 3 days. After that the editor decided to start a second round of review. Therefore the second round of review took over 1,5 months. Throuhg the whole process I sent several emails to the journal since for months I never received an information regarding the manuscript.
I also received this email from the assistant editor: "
Thank you for your enquiry about the status of your manuscript.
Unfortunately the previous Editorial Board Member who was handling your manuscript was no longer able to do so, and as a result we have recently assigned an other Board Members to take over this role.
I am terribly sorry about this, as this is an unusual situation which has caused unacceptable delays to your submission. We will continue to do all that we can to remedy the situation as soon as possible.
I hope we will have more news without too much additional delay, but we greatly appreciate your patience in the meantime."
Overall the process was extremely slow, unprofessional and they failed to inform us regarding any further updates of the status of our manuscript. Any changes were made only after we sent several emails to the journal.
The whole process lasted 9 months. The editor received the reports from the reviewers after 4 months and sent it to us 1,5 months later. We made the changes according to the report of one of the reviewers and send our corrreted manuscript after 3 days. After that the editor decided to start a second round of review. Therefore the second round of review took over 1,5 months. Throuhg the whole process I sent several emails to the journal since for months I never received an information regarding the manuscript.
I also received this email from the assistant editor: "
Thank you for your enquiry about the status of your manuscript.
Unfortunately the previous Editorial Board Member who was handling your manuscript was no longer able to do so, and as a result we have recently assigned an other Board Members to take over this role.
I am terribly sorry about this, as this is an unusual situation which has caused unacceptable delays to your submission. We will continue to do all that we can to remedy the situation as soon as possible.
I hope we will have more news without too much additional delay, but we greatly appreciate your patience in the meantime."
Overall the process was extremely slow, unprofessional and they failed to inform us regarding any further updates of the status of our manuscript. Any changes were made only after we sent several emails to the journal.
Motivation:
The journal has a very slow review process. After 6 months of review, we were given about 3 weeks for major revisions and asked to resubmit the manuscript. The reviews are so superficial and do not contribute to the quality of the manuscript.
Motivation:
Patronising desk-reject letter saying the article would not survive review. Not sure the editor has the expertise to make this decision. So questions regarding blind review, rather than editor preference. NB: I have published many highly cited articles in this and other top pub admin journals.
Motivation:
Transfer offered (Science Advances)
Motivation:
My manuscript was desk rejected after 33 days without being sent for review. While I understand that my work may not fully meet the high standards of a top-tier journal, the long delay before rejection was disappointing. The editorial process felt inefficient, and the slow decision time left me dissatisfied.
Motivation:
The editor’s first decision arrived quickly (12 days)
Motivation:
The journal states on their website that the submission to first decision time is 28 days (median).
I followed up a number of times and was provided no additional information about progress
Finally over 100 days (3.5 months) later manuscript was rejected and no reason given
I followed up a number of times and was provided no additional information about progress
Finally over 100 days (3.5 months) later manuscript was rejected and no reason given
Motivation:
Previously, I had published two articles in Microscopy and Microanalysis under a different editorial board and publisher (CUP), and I had not encountered such serious issues in this or any other JCR-indexed journals where I have published.
Motivation:
My manuscript remained “With Editor” for about 77 days before a desk rejection was issued.
The decision letter mentioned a technical problem that delayed the editorial process, but no specific scientific reason for rejection was provided.
Although the editors apologized, this long waiting time without external review is disappointing, especially compared to the journal’s stated average of 17 days to first decision.
Clearer communication and a more efficient handling of submissions would greatly improve the author experience.
Additionally, the Editorial Manager system does not allow authors to contact the handling editor directly.
All correspondence must go through Elsevier’s central support form, which further delays communication and leaves authors uncertain about the real status of their submission.
For young researchers and students involved in the publication process, this lack of transparency and responsiveness can be very discouraging.
The decision letter mentioned a technical problem that delayed the editorial process, but no specific scientific reason for rejection was provided.
Although the editors apologized, this long waiting time without external review is disappointing, especially compared to the journal’s stated average of 17 days to first decision.
Clearer communication and a more efficient handling of submissions would greatly improve the author experience.
Additionally, the Editorial Manager system does not allow authors to contact the handling editor directly.
All correspondence must go through Elsevier’s central support form, which further delays communication and leaves authors uncertain about the real status of their submission.
For young researchers and students involved in the publication process, this lack of transparency and responsiveness can be very discouraging.
Motivation:
They're not interested in a paper on a single party.
Motivation:
Transfer offered (Current Biology)
Motivation:
Editors suggested transferring our paper to another Cell Press journal. The options included Cell Reports, Current Biology, and Neuron.
Motivation:
The desk rejected the paper very quickly, which is a good thing. They also provide a submission transfer service, offering five recommended journals that can be transferred with one click. However, since most of them are open-access journals, we did not consider them.
Motivation:
Transfer offered (Nature communication)
Drawn back before first editorial decision after 121.6 days
Drawn back
Motivation:
No response from the editor after 4 months. Sent a couple of emails to the journal asking for updates and if they could get in touch with the editor, but just received a standard generic response.
Motivation:
The editor said they weren't accepting COVID-19 related articles anymore.
Motivation:
Our experience with journal was so so so bad, we waited for more than half a year after submission, still 'with editor'. Our co-author emailed them twice, no response. After 8 month wait, it was sent to reviewers but finally came back with useless and irrelevant comments indicating reviewer didn't actually read the paper carefully.
Motivation:
The review was professionally handled and timely. However, the editorial decision appeared to misclassify a theory-driven manuscript as primarily applied work. The paper develops formal methodology and offers conceptual insights that align well with the scope of JCTC. A more nuanced evaluation of theoretical contributions would help ensure appropriate scope matching.
Motivation:
Editorial decision stated that the work did not represent a sufficient conceptual advance for a general cell biological readership to justify publication in Nature Cell Biology, which leads me to think they did not understand the main message of the manuscript.
Motivation:
The manuscript was promptly rejected by the editor
Motivation:
This manuscript was transferred to Nature Communications at the advice of an editor of another publication within the Nature portfolio. After editorial consideration it was rejected because the editors considered (wrongly) that the manuscript was not sufficiently advanced and would have limited interest.
Motivation:
Our paper was rejected by the editors after an unjustifiably long time because their "editorial opinion is that the findings fall short of reaching the kind of new insights of broad interest that would warrant publication in Genome Biology", a very generic and unhelpful response.
Motivation:
The submission process was quite smooth, although the platform is not really inviting. To be honest, their article template as well as the submission website could benefit from a redesign.
It took a few weeks to get notified that our work was being taken care by an associate editor, then around a month to find two reviewers.
The review reports were "inconsistent" so to say, as one reviewer took 3 pages to motivate his answer while the other one provided a .TXT document of a few lines. Overall, they both agreed that the work was interesting, but probably not really in the scope of the journal. That being said, we were unsure our article would fit their scope, so that was a fair point.
Nonetheless, one reviewer provided very interesting perspectives of improvements, and we were very satisfied to improve our paper thanks to their comments. The submission went well in another journal probably thanks to their input.
It took a few weeks to get notified that our work was being taken care by an associate editor, then around a month to find two reviewers.
The review reports were "inconsistent" so to say, as one reviewer took 3 pages to motivate his answer while the other one provided a .TXT document of a few lines. Overall, they both agreed that the work was interesting, but probably not really in the scope of the journal. That being said, we were unsure our article would fit their scope, so that was a fair point.
Nonetheless, one reviewer provided very interesting perspectives of improvements, and we were very satisfied to improve our paper thanks to their comments. The submission went well in another journal probably thanks to their input.
Motivation:
there were no positives really. Manuscript was sent to two reviewers, the journal rejected it after the first review came in, so they did not even give it a fair chance of review. Not to mention that the first review could have been from a journal editor, so there is no way of telling. it was frustrating indeed. would not submit any work there in the future.
Drawn back before first editorial decision after 365.0 days
Drawn back
Motivation:
We waited from November until August for any reaction from the journal. In the Editorial Manager system, the status remained “Received by Editor” the entire time. In August—nine months after submission—we wrote to inquire and announced that we would be drawing back the manuscript. Only then did we finally receive a response, stating that the editors would try to process our submission more quickly. On that very same day, the status in the Editorial Manager changed to “Sent to reviewers” — again, nine months after submission.
We waited another three months, bringing the total time to a full year since submission, but nothing further happened. In November of the following year, we finally withdrew the manuscript for good.
Do not submit to this journal.
We waited another three months, bringing the total time to a full year since submission, but nothing further happened. In November of the following year, we finally withdrew the manuscript for good.
Do not submit to this journal.
Motivation:
The review process was absolutely awful. After three rounds and over a year and a half in the process, the paper was rejected based on the opinion of only one of three reviewers. In the prior round the editor informed us to focus on other aspects not related to the first reviewer and informed us the revision was 'minor' only to go back on their word and reject the paper for the first reviewer's comments anyway. I would strongly discourage anyone from submitting to this journal.
Motivation:
The rejection pointed out something we could have addressed without much difficulty. Still, a quick decision might be better than going through a long review process leading to the same result.
Motivation:
I do not know why！
Motivation:
disagree with the rejection reason that it does not fit with the journal's aims and scope.
Motivation:
Over the course of a full year, the journal was unable to complete the review process. Communication from the editorial office was sparse and inconsistent: responses to our inquiries alternated between “we have found a second reviewer and their report is overdue” and “we are currently looking for a second reviewer.” over the course of 8 months. The editor‑in‑chief did not respond, and no handling editor was ever confirmed. When contacted, the guest editors reported that they were unaware of our manuscript and could not advise who was handling it. Based on this experience, I cannot recommend submitting manuscripts to this journal. We have withdrawn our paper.
Motivation:
Generic rejection email with transfer to other journals offered
Motivation:
The process was fast but it felt completely unfair as our work had done significantly more than previous work on the journal regarding the same topic. We also used their template as instructed. All this wait for an ambiguous feedback was really a letdown. Not submitting here again. There are better alternatives to submit to from Elsevier.
Motivation:
After 4 months, they stated that they were unable to obtain comments from subject experts, and didn't find enough reviewer and decided to reject the paper
Motivation:
The editor gave reasons why the article was not suitable for the journal and constructive critique.
Motivation:
The first decision took 7 full weeks with no further assessment.
Motivation:
Quick turnaround, note that they accept only around 10% of submissions. The editor felt that the manuscript's current version " does not have adequate innovative contributions to statistical theory and methods."