Dur. 1st rev. rnd
Tot. handling time
Imm. rejection time
Num. rev. reports
Report quality
Overall rating
Outcome
Year
80.1 weeks
80.1 weeks
n/a
0 reports
n/a
0
Rejected
2018
8.7 weeks
16.7 weeks
n/a
3 reports
4
4
Accepted
2019
Motivation: When I submitted the paper, the editor rejected the paper with very useful comments in 4 days. I modified the paper and resubmit it again. Then, the paper is sent for the review process. The reviewers were familiar with the topic and provided appropriate comments. In conclusion, I had a good experience.
40.7 weeks
47.7 weeks
n/a
2 reports
3
2
Accepted
2016
Motivation: Reviews were ok (however just one of the two reviews was useful to really improve the paper), but the paper was handled in a terribly slow way.
17.1 weeks
19.9 weeks
n/a
2 reports
3
4
Accepted
2015
Motivation: Most of the reviewers' comments were useful and helped improving the quality of the accepted manuscript.
7.4 weeks
8.1 weeks
n/a
2 reports
3
4
Accepted
2014
Motivation: Reviews quality was OK but processing and publication times were really fast.
26.0 weeks
26.0 weeks
n/a
2 reports
4
3
Rejected
2013
Motivation: Slow review process. Also, although the reviews were OK, they did not understand the contributions of the paper. It is hard to introduce a new point of view in an already saturated area.
13.0 weeks
15.0 weeks
n/a
1 reports
3
5
Accepted
2012
Motivation: In robotics, as any other multidisciplinary science, the review process is far from being straightforward. In most situations, either on journals or relevant conferences in the field, such as IROS or ICRA, reviews may not fill our expectations. Either because they may fail to grasp the mathematical complexity associated with the proposed methodologies, or because they completely ignore the hard and time-consuming work associated with real-world experiments.

The Robotics and Autonomous Systems journal, aka. RAS, is perhaps the most well-suited journal in the field of robotics at the moment. In general, the review process is considerably faster than the alternatives (between 3 to 5 months), and the quality of the revisions is undoubtedly above the average, with always 3 or more reviewers for each report. The current editors, in particularly Prof. R. Dillmann, usually handle the decision process quite fast (around 1 week between each phase) and minor revisions are assessed without going back to the reviewers in most situations. Note that this does not mean that the review process lakes quality. In fact, it is quite the opposite and the progressive evolution of RAS impact factor over the last few years says it all.

To sum it up, if I would have to advise any roboticist on a good journal, with a considerably fast and fair review process, RAS would be the way to go. It has a broad scope within robotics field and publishes a large number of papers per year (around 100).