Dur. 1st rev. rnd
Tot. handling time
Imm. rejection time
Num. rev. reports
Report quality
Overall rating
Outcome
Year
n/a
n/a
3 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2018
Motivation: Very fast editorial rejection, stated reason was that the findings were not "sufficiently striking".
6.6 weeks
6.6 weeks
n/a
3 reports
3
4
Rejected
2018
Motivation: Manuscript was sent to three referees. One positive, one neutral, one negative --> rejection.
Overall satisfied with quality of reviews & handling time.
5.6 weeks
15.1 weeks
n/a
3 reports
4
3
Accepted
2017
Motivation: There are both advantages and disadvantages to Nat Comms. Upon initial submission, the editor requested that we revise and resubmit. This took three months, and resulted in a much better paper. We then went through two further review rounds, so that it was finally about 8 months before the manuscript was accepted. It then took another two months before publication, which is bizarre given that we submitted publication-ready latex proofs, and this is an online journal. We received good feedback from the reviewers, which ultimately resulted in a much better paper (!), but we agree with other authors, that the process takes far too long. Our eProofs were sent back to us with far too many simple errors to justify the GBP 3,700.00 (tax included) publication fee. Shocking, and makes you wonder how much the Nature management are profiting, at the expense of the copyediting firm in Bangladesh, who actually do the hard work of the production.

If we have one recommendation for the Nat Comms team it is to stop claiming that this is a "rapid communication" type journal. Why claim rapid turnover (one month I think), when the actual review process takes much longer? Claiming it is once month from the point of acceptance to the point of publication is trying to make it look much more rapid than it is.

Still, an excellent journal, and supportive of junior academics.
n/a
n/a
10 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2017
10.3 weeks
13.7 weeks
n/a
3 reports
3
3
Accepted
2017
Motivation: The review process was overall very long, and some of the reviewers' comments were not relevant to our manuscript. The editor was, however, very understanding when it came to decide which additional experiments were needed and which ones were not. Overall, the manuscript's quality improved considerably during the review process, mostly due to the additional experiments we were requested to do.
The proofs of the article required us a thorough review, because several mistakes (e.g. loss of italic, mislabel of references) had been introduced by the company that dealt with the manuscript.
10.7 weeks
14.6 weeks
n/a
3 reports
4
2
Accepted
2017
Motivation: The whole process was drawn out with many delays. We didn't receive out initial reviewer's reports until 11 weeks after submitting as they had trouble finding the right expert to review the paper. We had to contact the editor on multiple occasions for updates on the manuscripts progress.
n/a
n/a
13 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2018
12.0 weeks
30.0 weeks
n/a
3 reports
3
1
Accepted
2017
Motivation: The turnaround times for all editorial decisions was exceptionally slow. Even after we received 3 review reports indicating now changes were needed, it was almost 1 month before we received acceptance. The manuscript was accepted 6 weeks ago and does not appear in PubMed. I would be hesitant about sending a manuscript here if there were competition and a need for a timely editorial process.
12.1 weeks
12.1 weeks
n/a
3 reports
3
4
Rejected
2017
Motivation: The overall handling of manuscript was good, however I didn't like the manuscript tracking in nature communication witch offers much less information about manuscript status then is common in other journals.
n/a
n/a
5 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2017
5.9 weeks
5.9 weeks
n/a
1 reports
4
4
Rejected
2017
Motivation: Reviewer's comments were fair and largely in agreement with each other. They highlighted results in our study that bore too much similarity to earlier research, and that the novel aspects of our study were underexplored.
n/a
n/a
7 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2017
n/a
n/a
11 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2017
Motivation: The message they sent was: "I am afraid we are not persuaded that your findings represent a sufficiently striking advance to justify publication in Nature Communications."
n/a
n/a
7 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2017
9.7 weeks
52.3 weeks
n/a
3 reports
2
0
Rejected
2017
Motivation: After the 2nd round of review, the Editor decided to reject the manuscript. Following this we requested an appeal (on December 20th, 2016) given the positive comments of Referees 1 and 2, and our feeling that Referee 3 was biased and that his only interest was to see that a competing hypothesis be not published. The Editor accepted our appeal request on March 3, 2017 and sent again to the same reviewers the revised manuscript. The 3 referees decline the offer to review again the manuscript and the Editor recruited other 2 referees. As alternative for Reviewer #3 chose Referee #5 that is not only a member of the same institute of Referee 3, but he is also part of the same working group: thus, the probability that Referee 5 would have the same conflict of interest as Referee 3 was surely very high. Infact referee 5 suggested rejection and the Editor despite the enthusiastic comments of Referee 4 declined publication of our manuscript .
5.9 weeks
11.1 weeks
n/a
3 reports
5
5
Accepted
2015
Motivation: All rounds of review were fast and professional.
5.3 weeks
5.3 weeks
n/a
2 reports
4
4
Rejected
2017
Motivation: Both reviewers stated, with reasonable justification, that the study was not novel enough for Nature Communications and would possibly be more suitable for a more specialized journal.
n/a
n/a
7 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2017
9.7 weeks
21.3 weeks
n/a
2 reports
2
1
Accepted
2017
Motivation: The reviewers were good and had valid suggestions. The editor was terrible, the overall handling of the manuscript took ages and we had very simple changes to make. It seems like the edito forgot or did not push the reviewers for answers to our comments. Also, after the second revision the reviewers were satisfied but the editor himself decided we had to repeat several experiments. We repeated the experiments, nothing changed in the manuscript or conclusions and still took another 3 weeks to get an answer, and then another 2 weeks for the final acceptance. Every week we e-mailed the editor asking for updates, most times got no reply. Unacceptable that it took so long, will never submit to NatComm again!
n/a
n/a
15 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2017
n/a
n/a
19 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2017
8.1 weeks
15.0 weeks
n/a
3 reports
3
4
Accepted
2017
6.4 weeks
13.7 weeks
n/a
3 reports
5
3
Accepted
2017
Motivation: Very slow editorial decision making and review times for a journal that asks reviewers to send reports in 10 days. After acceptance, multiple back-and-forth changes about text also took considerable amount of time as did final online publication of the paper. In the end, positive outcome in good quality and rigorous journal but be prepared for the editorial process to take much longer than e.g. Cell Press journals.
n/a
n/a
17 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2017
10.1 weeks
10.1 weeks
n/a
2 reports
4
2
Rejected
2017
Motivation: The review process is quite long. The editor decided to send out the manuscript for review after two weeks upon initial submission. We received the comments from reviewers 8 weeks later. It seems that the whole process is time consuming and the manuscript tracking system is clumsy.
13.1 weeks
52.3 weeks
n/a
2 reports
3
1
Accepted
2016
Motivation: The second round of reviews was made because one of the reviewers never answered to our reviewed paper. We pointed out from the beginning that this reviewer had a potential conflict of interest because he pointed out as an argument against the publication of our paper a preprint that was clearly overlapping. The reaction of the editor was very slow (note the number of weeks of the second round), and we wrote several times to the editor asking for explanations on the delayed answer. Finally, he recognized that the referee was no answering and he decided to sent the manuscript to another referee, with the subsequent delay. But the worst thing is that, after this long process, our paper was finally published in the same number that the preprint that the referee that never answered was referring to. You can extract your own conclusions about the opacity of this process.
Furthermore, after acceptance, the paper took four rounds of proofreadings because most of the equations had errors (that our manuscript didn't have). Given the prize of the journal this is absolutely unacceptable, and we still have no complete confidence in that the paper is 100% free of errors after all this process.
8.7 weeks
19.4 weeks
n/a
3 reports
5
3
Accepted
2016
Motivation: Manuscript was significantly improved due to suggestions from reviewers and Editor. I was thankful to receive such high-quality suggestions. However, the entire manuscript handling process takes too long! For each round the manuscript is sent out for review, I waited for approximately 2-2.5 months to hear back from Editor (manuscript was sent to reviewers twice). After acceptance notice, I waited 6 weeks to finally see manuscript in online print (returned comments on proofs within 3 days). For the ~5500EUR publication fee, I would expect swifter turn around.
n/a
n/a
24 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2017
7.9 weeks
17.0 weeks
n/a
3 reports
4
3
Accepted
2017
Motivation: In general handling was good. One slight critical thing could be that the overall process took quite substantial time in contrast to other journals.
10.3 weeks
18.7 weeks
n/a
3 reports
5
4
Accepted
2017
Motivation: The process took slightly longer than expected, but we received high-quality reviews which substantially improved the manuscript.
13.0 weeks
13.0 weeks
n/a
3 reports
1
1
Rejected
2016
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).
13.0 weeks
13.0 weeks
n/a
3 reports
2
2
Rejected
2016
Motivation: Long turnaround, there was a long wait period until it was sent for review. Although the manuscript advertised short review times, it took a total of 3 months. One of the reviewers also rejected with blank statements of non-novelty without providing evidence/citations. Very frustrating.
n/a
n/a
17 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2016
Motivation: The decision making was too slow, and their comments were nothing but useless one.
n/a
n/a
6 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2016
n/a
n/a
4 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2016
Motivation: The submission system is very author-friendly, and the rejection at least was fast and (nearly) painless.
n/a
n/a
1 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2012
n/a
n/a
7 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2016
8.6 weeks
22.1 weeks
n/a
3 reports
4
4
Accepted
2016
10.0 weeks
10.0 weeks
n/a
3 reports
4
2
Rejected
2016
Motivation: The review process took so long although the paper was a short communication type. The editor made a decision based on just one of the three reviewers' views and opinions that were not supported by any reference. I think the editors might want to consider more carefully the obvious "conflict of interest" raised by some reviewers before making the final decision.
n/a
n/a
10 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
2015