Things like these certainly happen too often, but it should also be realized that we’re generally not dealing with professional full-time editors. Most journal editors (‘in-chief’) are scientists like us, who often take on this responsibility as a honorary job and who in most cases have their own research projects, field work, courses to give, programs to run, etc.

Almost the entire global scientific community has joined the publishing rat race, leading to an enormous pile of submitted manuscripts, many of which do not meet minimum scientific requirements, are insufficiently matured for submission, or do not provide any new insights. Managing this constant flow of manuscripts and sifting out suitable manuscripts is thus a time-consuming task for editors, so it may happen that the handling of a manuscript is delayed with no good reason. In case the editor provides her or his services to one of the large commercial publishers it’s not unlikely, that the manuscript handling system and poor communication with/by the ‘office’ are to blame. So to some extent these editors are in the same boat as the authors.

My general advice: Keep track on the review process and if it takes too long (depending on promises made by the journal), send a friendly message to the editor. Most often you will receive a timely and adequate reply. If you’re unhappy with the outcome, the only suitable addressee for a complaint is the editor. In most cases contacting the publisher will not be useful.

Finally, if a manuscript is really out of scope for a specific journal, it should not have been submitted to that journal in the first place. If this decision is, however, not compatible with the information in the guide to authors, then again the complaint should go to the editor.

Very poor handling to come with a delayed response, after two months! That means that you lost two months, having been able to send it to another journal earlier. Unfortunately there is not much one can do, I think, more than write to the editor in chief. We are in the hands of the journals.

Good luck with your work! regards

Unfortunately, the editor is the main reason of that delay. The status of the paper was " Editor Invited" all that time.

I agree with Vivi. I have had similar experiences and, sadly and basically, you have to learn to live with it. Let me tell you also that you were relatively lucky: in more than one occasion I have had to wait more than six months for an answer from the journal, not to speak of some absurd and insultingly inadequate evaluations of some papers. Of course, the “peer-reviewed” system, together with the whole journal-based scientific model has been questioned systematically and thoroughly for more than two decades, but, to my knowledge, nobody has been able to produce an acceptable alternative (though there have been some advances in that regard).

Things like these certainly happen too often, but it should also be realized that we’re generally not dealing with professional full-time editors. Most journal editors (‘in-chief’) are scientists like us, who often take on this responsibility as a honorary job and who in most cases have their own research projects, field work, courses to give, programs to run, etc.

Almost the entire global scientific community has joined the publishing rat race, leading to an enormous pile of submitted manuscripts, many of which do not meet minimum scientific requirements, are insufficiently matured for submission, or do not provide any new insights. Managing this constant flow of manuscripts and sifting out suitable manuscripts is thus a time-consuming task for editors, so it may happen that the handling of a manuscript is delayed with no good reason. In case the editor provides her or his services to one of the large commercial publishers it’s not unlikely, that the manuscript handling system and poor communication with/by the ‘office’ are to blame. So to some extent these editors are in the same boat as the authors.

My general advice: Keep track on the review process and if it takes too long (depending on promises made by the journal), send a friendly message to the editor. Most often you will receive a timely and adequate reply. If you’re unhappy with the outcome, the only suitable addressee for a complaint is the editor. In most cases contacting the publisher will not be useful.

Finally, if a manuscript is really out of scope for a specific journal, it should not have been submitted to that journal in the first place. If this decision is, however, not compatible with the information in the guide to authors, then again the complaint should go to the editor.

Robert,

I recently had to indicate 5 reviewers. The journal had not yet any one available to review the paper. I indicated one in Finland, 2 in Germany and the last ones in Brazil. They manage to have the Germans acceptance. After all it took 8 months until the paper was published.

By the same time, I sent another one to a Brazilian journal. I still am waiting a response about acceptance or not.

Reviewers are normally not paid, so, I think it is not an ease task to find one.

You may lodge complaint to the publishing house. There is email id of the publisher on the home page. If you find any problem or discrepancies as to how the papers are handled, you can let them know about your problem. But this happens merely due to two reasons: 1) Editor is very busy 2) He/she is biased

Unfortunately, the education standard is decreasing day by day. People have forgotten what they have been taught in the Engineering Universities. You could not help it but sending it to some other journal. Best of Luck !

I have a very weird experience with a journal. About six months ago, I received an email from the publisher manager that invited me to become a temporary reviewer of this journal and send them my CV. I sent my CV to them and accepted to be a temporary reviewer. They sent me an article. I put the article in a very basic plagiarism tester just for similarity check. I found a 100% similarity with a published an article. That article has been published in a conference proceeding about one year ago. I astonished how it should be possible for a high-rank journal to ignore some essential article preparation before sending to the reviewer. to make sure, I even put the two articles in readability indices tester, and I found them exactly matched. I tried to contact with editor-in-chief in another country with at least 10 hours time difference, and finally, in third midnight I could reach him. And when I asked "if you are in charge of this position," he told me: "I have not been working with this journal since six months ago."

I see many papers like that at non scopus journals and the journal name changed more than three times in less than one year!!

I think that this is not a Scopus journal.

Regards

Mohamed

unfortunately, I have to say it was Q2 -Scopus one -

I have seen many other inappropriate actions from this 3.?? Impact factor Journal

I noticed that the corresponding author is a key factor for the paper to be accepted or rejected, regardless of the paper content. Also, papers from certain known persons may be quickly accepted, even if there is a certain problem at the paper.!!

this journal was: RECENT PATENT ON COMPUTER SCIENCE from BENTHAM PUBLISHER

Dear Mohamed Gomaa ,

These things unfortunately happen. I received the most ridiculous responses throughout the years. One journal needed more than a month to notice that my manuscript contained no experimental data which is obvious if you send an ‘in silico’ type of manuscript, I even already specifically mentioned this in the cover letter. On another occasion I received a response that basically said that my manuscript was ‘perfect’ but they simply lacked the space to publish all papers they could accept.

I think it is a fact of life that some journal receive too many submissions to handle them properly in terms of time and are not able to handle everything with the care and the attention every submission deserves.

Azadeh Nazemi , I noticed that the journal “Recent patents on computer science” you mentioned has changed its name:

https://benthamscience.com/journals/recent-advances-in-computer-science-and-communications/

Under the old name it is listed in the most recent list of Scopus indexed journals. I sense that this particular journal is in the middle of getting their act to together. Having said this I feel that you did your job as a good and responsible peer reviewer (checking the author(s), the first impression of the paper, their references and ultimately if still relevant its content and overall message). The issue of duplicate publishing happens everywhere I recently came across a duplicate publication in a journal from Springer and a journal from Elsevier published in the same year. So unfortunately these things happen and ultimately such authors will get caught: you can mislead the ‘system’ but sooner or later you will fall. See for example the interesting site Retraction Watch:

https://retractionwatch.com/

Best regards.