After submitting
In this section:
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- Tracking your submission
- My paper has been accepted – what next?
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- Article metrics and alerts
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The review process
1. Awaiting Editorial Production Assistant Processing
The Editorial Production Assistant will carry out quality checks on your article at which point you may need to provide further information before your article is sent for Peer Review.
2. Awaiting Editor Assignment:
Your article has passed initial quality checks by the Editorial Production Assistant and is in the process of being assigned to an appropriate Editor who will evaluate your article for scope, quality, and fit for the journal. Papers that do not meet these criteria will be rejected.
3. Awaiting Reviewer Selection
Your article meets the Journal’s scope and has been approved for peer review. The Editorial Team are in the process of finding suitable external expert reviewers that are available to review your article. Your article may also be sent to relevant Associate Editor’s for internal review. For most articles, a minimum of two reviews are required. Articles can be sent to multiple prospective reviewers before the required number are secured.
4. Peer Review in Progress
Your article has secured the minimum number of required reviewers. Peer reviewers are given 2 weeks to submit their review of your article. On the occasion that a reviewer withdraws from the process, the Editorial Team will begin the reviewer selection process again.
5. Awaiting Editor Decision
Your article has now received the minimum number of reviews required to make a decision. The Editor will take into account the expert reviewers’ opinions to make an informed decision of accept, reject or revise.
6. In Production
Your article has been accepted and you will receive an email to confirm. Your article will move through the final quality checks and in to Production where it will be processed for publication. You will be emailed by the Production Editor with a timeline and be provided with a link to a platform called Publishing at Work where you can continue to track your article’s progress. More information about the Production process can be found here .
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How can I check the status of my submitted paper?
Modified on Wed, 7 Aug at 1:03 PM
To check the status of your submission in our system, log into your ScholarOne Manuscripts account, and click on “Author.” Under the Author Dashboard Section, click on “Submitted Manuscripts.”
Please note that the following definitions generally apply to most journals. Each journal follows its own workflow, so some terms may not apply. Please contact the journal's editorial office for clarification.
| | |
| | This means the author has successfully submitted and approved the manuscript. After this, the manuscript usually goes through a formatting check by the journal staff before it is assigned to an editor. |
| | Your submission is waiting for initial review by the editorial office. This may involve checking that the submission is within the journal's scope and adheres to submission guidelines. |
| Multiple editors may be assigned to your submission, depending on the journal's workflow. This status typically means your manuscript is awaiting assignment to an editor after the initial review of the submission. Depending on the journal's workflow, this status could also indicate when the editorial office determines if your submission is eligible for peer review. This may not apply. | |
| | It means the manuscript has been assigned to an editor and is waiting for the editor to agree to evaluate the manuscript. This may not apply. |
| This indicates that an editor has agreed to evaluate the manuscript, and the assignment is in their editorial queue. At this stage, the editor may complete their own manuscript screening and determine if it is suitable for peer review. If the manuscript does not match the journal's scope or does not meet the journal's standards, it may be returned without review or be desk rejected. | |
| If the manuscript is suitable for peer review, this step indicates that the editor is searching for viable peer reviewers. When the system shows the status “Reviewer invited,” it means that invitations have been sent out to reviewers, but they have not yet accepted the invitation. Sometimes, the tracking system may show the “Reviewer Invited” status for some time and then move back to “With Editor.” This probably means that the peer reviewers have declined the invitations, and the editor will now have to look for other reviewers. Sage Journals usually have a required minimum of two external reviews. | |
| This status means that the manuscript is under peer review. Peer review is an honorary service that requires detailed scrutiny and evaluation of the manuscript and therefore takes time. The amount of time a manuscript is in review depends on reviewer availability. Please note that other statuses may fall under this umbrella, such as "Awaiting Reviewer Scores." | |
| This status indicates that all peer reviews are completed and have been received by the editorial office. Sometimes, the editor, after going through the reviews, might feel that an additional review is required. In such cases, the status might return to “Under Review.” Once the additional review is completed, the status will return to “Required Reviews Complete.” | |
| This means that the editor is now determining a decision based on the peer reviewer's comments and their own assessment. The editor may consult the editorial board or other editorial office members if required. Once this status shows up, the author is generally informed of the editorial decision shortly afterward. |
| This indicates that a decision was made and a revision has been requested. The submission is now with the author. The author is usually given a deadline of a few weeks to a few months; this may be extended upon request, for more information see Additionally, some journals ask the author to submit a point-by-point response to the reviewer's comments with their revised manuscript. | |
| This indicates that the author has submitted the revised document (and a point-by-point response to the reviewer's comments, if required). The document is now awaiting a check by the journal's editorial office. | |
| It shows that the author has clicked on an action link indicating that they do not wish to submit a revised version of the manuscript. In other words, the author is not ready to make the revisions suggested and would like to withdraw their paper. This may not apply. | |
| | If submitted to a subscription journal, a completed contributor form is required after the manuscript has been accepted. Locate the manuscript and complete the form. If you have any questions, contact the editorial office. |
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Submitted my paper. Now what?
Feb 18, 2022 | Scholarly publishing
There is something of an air of mystery as to what actually happens to your manuscript once you’ve pressed that “submit” button. It seemingly goes off into cyberspace and you are left playing the waiting game.
These days, if you’ve submitted to a journal via an online submission system, you will be able to track its progress to some extent as you will generally be able to see what stage it’s at. The names of these stages can, however, seem fairly vague and almost worse than no information at all.
So let’s translate them. There are many different submission systems and the stages a manuscript goes through during peer review does differ system to system (and, indeed, journal to journal), so for the purposes of this post we’re going to look at the most common stages of the most common submission site: ScholarOne (formally Manuscript Central).
First Steps
Initially your manuscript will go through stages such as “Awaiting Admin Checklist” and/or “Awaiting Editor Assignment” depending on how new submissions are initially checked on the journal. These stages tend to be moved through fairly swiftly as they are just the editorial team checking that your submission is suitable for peer review and then deciding which of the editors will be responsible for it during the process.
Awaiting Reviewer Selection
This is the first stage of the peer-review process and your manuscript will be here until the assigned Editor has selected some suitable experts to invite to review.
Once enough reviewers have been selected, the manuscript will move on to the next stage. If only one reviewer agrees to review and all the others decline the invitation, however, your manuscript may well return to this stage while the Editor selects more. So if you log in to check on progress several weeks after submission and find your manuscript at this stage, it doesn’t necessarily mean that no action has been taken.
Awaiting Reviewer Invitation
This means that potential reviewers have been selected, but have yet to be invited. Manuscripts quite often return to this stage if not enough of the invited reviewers accepted the invitation so further invitations need to be sent. It’s quite common for editors to select a lot of reviewers, but only invite a few at a time.
Awaiting Reviewer Assignment
This rather ambiguous stage is when reviewers have been invited, but we are waiting for the required number to agree to review. In other words, at this point, the ball is squarely in the reviewers’ court!
In an ideal world, enough of the invited reviewers will agree to review and your manuscript will move on to the next stage. In reality, however, it is quite normal for invited reviewers to be unavailable and for your manuscript to return to one of the earlier stages a couple of times.
Awaiting Reviewer Scores
This is the stage that the editorial team will be striving to get your manuscript to as swiftly as possible. If your manuscript is at this stage, then enough experts have agreed to read and evaluate it and we just need to wait for the reviewers to return their comments so that a decision can be taken.
Once through this stage, your manuscript will move on to a stage such as “Awaiting Recommendation” and/or “Awaiting Decision” and it generally won’t be long before a decision is sent to you.
So That’s It?
That’s it. There are, of course, many things that can cause delays to the process, but the majority of manuscripts move from one stage to the next fairly swiftly.
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Understanding the Decision Process
What happens when you receive the decision letter? After peer review, the editor will consider feedback from the reviewers and then make a decision about the article. The decision letter is delivered to the author via email.
There are three basic types of decisions: Accept, Revise, and Reject. No matter which decision you receive, be sure to read the entire decision letter carefully. Pay special attention to deadlines and next steps.
Upon acceptance, you may be asked to complete additional steps. For example, providing final high-quality files or signing a publishing agreement. Promptly complete any requested tasks to avoid publication delays. Learn more about your role in article production .
Revise is the most common type of decision. You will be asked to make changes and submit a revised version for further consideration. The scope of the changes can range from small corrections to major rewriting. The decision letter will include the reviewers’ suggestions on how to improve the article. You should include a point-by-point reply that addresses each suggestion when you submit the revised article.
If your article is rejected, the decision letter will explain why. The letter may include suggestions for improving your article before you submit it to another publication.
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How to handle situation in which the article has been "Awaiting reviewer assignment" for 5 months?
I submitted an article 5 months ago to a journal. Since then, the article has been jumping between " Waiting for Reviewer Assignment " and " Contacting Potential Reviewers " (10 changes of status now). The article is quite technical and multidisciplinary, so I understand that finding reviewers is hard. Still, this had never happened to me and I wonder how to proceed now.
I wrote an email to the generic address listed in the journal page ( journalname@publishername ), obtaining first an automatic response:
(...) We are currently experiencing a high volume of requests and will answer your inquiry as soon as possible. Please allow additional time for the processing of recently-submitted manuscripts and for the posting of recently-accepted manuscripts as Accepted Articles. (...)
And then a fairly generic one, stating that the handling editor is presently working to secure reviewers, sending invitations "daily". In my question I asked whether they had secured at least one reviewer, but I did not receive a concrete answer, so I assume they have not.
What is the best course of action now? I have several options, from writing directly one of the editors (I do not know which one, one of the options would be to write the editor of a previous article we submitted and published in the same journal), to withdrawing the manuscript. How can I respectfully convey the journal the message that I would prefer not to withdraw the article*, but that I will do so if they do not find any reviewers soon?
*Note: this is actually the third article in a series submitted to this journal (the previous two were published) and I honestly think that it is an ideal fit, so I would prefer not to withdraw it.
Note 2: The article waited almost a month (25 days) awaiting associate reviewer assignment.
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- 2 As an editor, I can tell you getting a reviewer let alone a competent reviewer is difficult. Further, an editor may not carry out his/her duties every day. I for example look at my assignments once a week. I know some editors do it once a month or every K months. This means they only check whether a paper has sufficient reviewers every K month(s). If not, they invite and check again the next K month(s). Note, editors are usually volunteers. – Prof. Santa Claus Commented Feb 15, 2023 at 20:44
3 Answers 3
If you are already corresponding with an individual, such as an editor, you could offer to provide a list of names of potential reviewers along with their qualifications. Don't include your collaborators unless you mark them as such.
Some papers, perhaps yours, are difficult to review simply because finding the necessary competence combined with willingness is difficult. Withdrawing your paper and submitting it elsewhere probably won't speed up the process if a new editor faces the same difficulty.
- We are corresponding with an individual but this is neither an editor nor an associate editor... Indeed, that is the other reason why we are unsure about withdrawing. The thing is, we don't know to what extent the delay is only due to a lack of reviewers. Considering the fact that the article took almost a month to get assigned to an associate editor... We are considering an element of not-very-good article handling practices here. – D1X Commented Feb 15, 2023 at 14:59
- @D1X some publishers/journals have people on staff whose job seems to be to respond to emails about their papers. They don't necessarily have a good view as to what is going on. Reaching out to an editor directly should be your next step. Don't hesitate to ask. They're there to help (in theory anyway). A separate journal from the one mentioned in my answer had this setup, and I couldn't get a straight answer about the status of my paper. – Cameron Williams Commented Feb 15, 2023 at 15:01
Although there are many courses of action you might take, perhaps consider asking yourself what do you want to achieve:
- to get your paper published sooner; or
- to motivate the journal to improve the publishing practices.
These goals are not necessarily aligned. If you want to achieve the second, you need to look for the action which matters for the journal, and perhaps consider withdrawing your paper and resubmitting it elsewhere. If you prefer the first, you may proceed with various complaints within the journal hierarchy (up to the Editor-in-Chief), which often improves the chances that the handling Editor might focus more on your manuscript, but usually does not impact the way how the process is (dis)organised generally.
- Is it reasonable under these conditions, then, to write the Editor-in-Chief using the email listed in the journal page? – D1X Commented Feb 15, 2023 at 13:51
- @D1X You may write to EC, but a chance EC actually reads your email and act on is slim. But your handling editor might be (un)impressed and this can motivate them to finally act on the paper. – Dmitry Savostyanov Commented Feb 15, 2023 at 14:05
I was in this exact boat with a top flight journal in one of my fields. I waited five months with reasonably consistent contact with editors, and they could not secure a referee for my paper even with several suggested referees on my part (I assume they were all swamped). I eventually withdrew it and had success in another journal. There's no guarantee that will work in your case, but different journals have different pools of referees they can pull from.
My paper was a bit more mathematical than a standard mathematical physics paper, was somewhat lengthy for how technical it was (~20 pages), and was extremely novel. I think all three played a role with regards to the challenges of securing a referee. You may face similar issues due to the nature of your paper based on its description. Reach out to an editor directly to see if you can get a better view as to what is going on and see if there is anything you can do to help expedite the process.
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IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
2. Awaiting Editor Assignment: Your article has passed initial quality checks by the Editorial Production Assistant and is in the process of being assigned to an appropriate Editor who will evaluate your article for scope, quality, and fit for the journal. Papers that do not meet these criteria will be rejected. 3. Awaiting Reviewer Selection
Answer: Dear author, The editorial hierarchy varies from journal to journal. Eic usually signifies the Editor in chief. Once initial check up is done on your manuscript, the EIC will screen your manuscript to check if it fits the scope of the journal and if it is of sufficient interest to the journal's readership.
You have three queries. Let's take them one by one. Meaning of 'Awaiting Editor Assignment' This means that your manuscript has cleared the admin check, that is, it was found matching the journal's scope and also adhering to the journal's guidelines, apart from a cursory check of the novelty and quality of the study.
6. Decision notification e-mails and what they mean. There are several decisions that authors may receive after submitting their paper to one of the Society's journals: Reject without review: The Action Editor has rejected the paper without sending it for peer review. Reject: The paper has been through the peer review process and the Action ...
Awaiting Editor Assignment: Multiple editors may be assigned to your submission, depending on the journal's workflow. This status typically means your manuscript is awaiting assignment to an editor after the initial review of the submission. Depending on the journal's workflow, this status could also indicate when the editorial office ...
Initially, once your paper was submitted, the status showed "Admin not assigned." Then it was assigned to an Editorial Assistant (EA) for admin check. This is when the status changed to "EA: [name]." Once the EA started checking the manuscript, the status changed to "Awaiting ED Assignment." At this stage, the EA goes through the paper and ...
1. You can send a request for an update at any time. You may or may not learn anything. There could be many reasons for a delay, including not sending too many papers to one editor and needing to find another who is suitable. But an average of 30 days tells you little about the distribution of actual times.
6. First, congratulations!! "Awaiting Assignment to Batch" is part of the accepted workflow. Once accepted, some journals have a set of tasks that a manuscript goes through. One of the steps available (and being used here) is batching and sending of the manuscript to the journals production service. It will wait until a predetermined condition ...
The acronym ME most likely stands for "Managing Editor" or "Manuscript Editor", and so the message says that the paper is awaiting processing by this person. As shown in this question on the process for journals , that initial "processing" step usually involves an initial assessment by that initial editor, and if it passes that hurdle it will ...
本文介绍了IEEE旗下SCI论文的投稿过程和审稿状态，以及不同角色的作用和时间要求。其中，Awaiting TE Assignment是等待技术编辑的指派，一般1-3天左右，技术编辑会根据审稿人的意见做决定。
First Steps. Initially your manuscript will go through stages such as "Awaiting Admin Checklist" and/or "Awaiting Editor Assignment" depending on how new submissions are initially checked on the journal. These stages tend to be moved through fairly swiftly as they are just the editorial team checking that your submission is suitable for ...
My manuscript status changed from 'Awaiting Technical Editor Scores' to 'Awaiting AE Recommendation,' but the same day, it went back to 'Awaiting Technical Editor Scores.' The following day, it changed back again to 'Awaiting AE Recommendation.' Please help me understand these status changes.
Learn what to do after receiving a decision letter for your article submission to an IEEE journal. Find out the three types of decisions: Accept, Revise, and Reject, and how to respond to each one.
After one day the status was EA assignment pending and after two more days it was under review. But only after two days under review the status changed to "Awaiting AE Recommendation". ... AE stands for "Associate Editor.""Awaiting AE recommendation" status means that the AE has collected all reviews from the reviewers who were assigned to ...
The manuscript awaiting the assignment of an editor for more than two-and-half months is both a bit long and unusual. It's more common to have a challenge finding peer reviewers, unless with this journal or for this paper, the review is to be done internally. If that's not the case, the journal is having a challenge assigning an editor to ...
2023.7.3 Awaiting TE Assignment - Waiting for Technical Examiner Assignment on July 3, 2023. 2023.7.11 Under review - Currently being reviewed as of July 11, 2023. Jeralyn 2023-05-28 In the first review, there were four reviewers with not many comments and the issues raised were not very critical. ...
According to the process described in IEEE Transactions, "Awaiting AE recommendation" status means that the AE has collected all reviews from the reviewers who were assigned to review your manuscript and that the AE's decision for acceptance is pending. After this phase, the AE would send her/his report to the EiC (Editor in Cheif), for the ...
Awaiting seats Total aircraft capacity: 76 Seats remaining: Yes. Status Guest Seat; 1: FRI/J: View seatmap. Upgrade requests Total First Class capacity: 12 Available First Class seats: 4 Checked-in First Class guests: 6. Status Guest Seat; Food Menu. Pre-order food menu. First Class. Main. Beverages.
1. I submitted a short paper to a math journal more that one month ago. The status is still "awaiting assignment" and I checked the online system which shows that even no editor has been assigned to my paper. I sent two emails about updating the status of the paper to editor and Editor-in-Chief several days ago and I got no reply from them.
A direct change after submission (or after the initial admin check) to 'Awaiting AE Recommendation' typically means that the Associate Editor (AE) has had a look at the paper and decided not to send it for review. This is usually because of a scope mismatch, or in some cases, the novelty and/or quality of the research/paper not being ...
I submitted an article 5 months ago to a journal. Since then, the article has been jumping between "Waiting for Reviewer Assignment" and "Contacting Potential Reviewers" (10 changes of status now).The article is quite technical and multidisciplinary, so I understand that finding reviewers is hard.
1 Answer to this question. Answer: Thank you for your question! When a manuscript is submitted, it undergoes editorial assessment. This stage could be called as "Awaiting AE assignment", wherein the manuscript is evaluated for ethical considerations and scope match with the readership of the journal. Next, suitable referees are selected based ...
The manuscript being stuck at Awaiting Reviewer Assignment for a month is not uncommon. This means that while the manuscript cleared the desk screening and was deemed good to go for peer review, the journal is finding it somewhat challenging to identify the right peer reviewers for your paper. This could be because potential peer reviewers ...
The number of times your manuscript status has changed to 'Awaiting Reviewer Assignment' and then back to 'Awaiting Reviewer Selection' reflects the challenge the editor is having in getting the requisite number of reviewers (usually two or three) for the peer review. This could be due to the approaching holiday season; the frequent ...