Prolonged period in review process of manuscripts generally important problemin most of the scientific journals? What can be do for shortening the review process period of manuscripts? Do you have any logical, ethical and acceptable suggestion in this regard?
* Do your part by making sure you're submitting an excellent paper. Have several senior and junior colleagues give critical feedback on the manuscript before submitting. Always have a native English speaker go through it just before submission. Never make any exceptions whatsoever from these rules.
* I have a rough feeling for what journals that are "fast" and "slow" in my field. Do you have, or can you develop, a similar feeling for your field? Talking to people at conferences, and reviewing manuscripts for various journals in your field, should be good ways to gain insights here.
* Do your part by making sure you're submitting an excellent paper. Have several senior and junior colleagues give critical feedback on the manuscript before submitting. Always have a native English speaker go through it just before submission. Never make any exceptions whatsoever from these rules.
* I have a rough feeling for what journals that are "fast" and "slow" in my field. Do you have, or can you develop, a similar feeling for your field? Talking to people at conferences, and reviewing manuscripts for various journals in your field, should be good ways to gain insights here.
In addition to Rolf Henrik Nilsson suggestions above, I think it is also important to think if our responsibility as reviewers. If we do not respond to requests to review, or not review within resonable time etc the time from submission to publication will be longer. However, it is not a good solution for the journal to just shorten the time the reviewers have to perform the review as that will lead to either that the potential reviewers decline or that the review is of poor quality.
Lastly I want to say that we must have resonable expectations for the time it will take, the editor have to decide if the manuscript should be sent out for review, find reviewers, which need to review the papers, and then the editor needs the read the reviews and make a decision and write a decision letter to the authors. All of this takes time, and both the editors and reviewers have to find the time for this in their already rather full schedules.
I completely agree with Svante. As an editor of two (smaller) zoology journal I frequently face with the problem that the possible reviewer do not answer to our request. Usually we give 7 days for an answer and than looking for an other reviewer. If three person approached do not answer for our requests it means that the Ms is laying for more than a month without any progress. If the reviewer agreed upon commenting on an Ms (s)he has 4 weeks to complete the review. Frequently it is not done (and sometime I did not hear about the reviewer anymore, in this case all the process begins anew). So it takes at least 3 - 4 months until an Ms (after revision) is accepted. But frequently it takes more time. So I'm always sceptic a bit if reading about 1 week acceptance of an Ms (including reviewing).
Thanks to all answers. Authors are required to fulfill their responsibilities. Rolf Henrik Nilsson's proposals are almost imperative for the authors. I agree with Dino Demicheli's ethical concerns, and I emphasized these concerns in my question. All the answers are valuable for preparing and reviewing process period of manuscripts, but Svante Martinsson’s and Csaba Csuzdi’s answers are more related with the question. When the answers are read in succession, it is like a series in the process of preparing and publishing an manuscript.The purpose of my question is to get suggestions for shortening the review process period of manuscripts. I know it is a difficult question.
To add to this discussion, another option that greatly shortens the time to publication is post-publication peer review (PPPR). This means that the paper is out very rapidly, then reviewed. There are obviously upsides and downsides to this approach, which you can read about here: Article Reviewing post-publication peer review
Dear Erik Lilleskov thanks for your suggestion which brings a new perspective to the problem.
you need to follow the instructions to authors carefully so that reviewers can return back your manuscript early
Dear Numan Nafie Hameed, thanks for your suggestion for shortening the review process period of manuscripts. But in the practical life sometimes our manuscript may be accepted after months without any revision suggestion. In the question I also hope to get logical, ethical and acceptable suggestions for the solution of such delay.
1. title of manuscript should be appealing
2. pre-submission review by an expert of the addressed field for checking scientific body of knowledge
2. linguistic check by a native english speaker if english is not your mother tongue
3. scope and formatting of the manuscript according to the journal
Dear Munazza Kiran, thanks for your suggestions. You highlighted important points during the preparation and submission of manuscripts. These points must be paid attention. Sometimes the process in journals can be very long. Although your suggestions are intended to shorten this process, but sometimes the referees may be delayed and unanswer the evaluation.
I have tried to answer this question 3 times only to have problems occur and my answer deleted. I will wait until I return home and have my regular computer.
Go with Open Access journals.
MDPI would seem to be the largest contributor to DOAJ in terms of open access papers, with around 22,000 articles in 2019.
In the same period, BiomedCentral had around 8,500 articles, Frontiers 7,500, Nature 7,300, and Elsevier 5,200.
Open access journal typically provide the number of days (not week or months) until a first editorial decision, and publication times (in days) after acceptance.
I recommended MDPI, the review is quick but it still good enough to be publish with them. Some Elsevier journal in Elsevier needs 2 years to finish the review process, it is too long and authors will lost the novelty of theirs works.
Dear John Warren Reynolds, probably a technical problem. I look forward to your answer. Yours truly.
Dear Michael John McAleer and Phuong Nguyen-Tri, thanks for your valueable
suggestions.
Yes Michael John McAlee, OA is an option however, many researcher cannot cover the (sometimes extremely high) APCs. Especially in less-supported field of science like taxonomy. (A 3000 USD APC exceeds eg. my yearly research budget).
The other problem that you can publish the description of. a new dinosaur species in Nature or Frontiers journal but what about 100 new mite species? So the answer to the original question is rather complicated and highly depends on the research field as well. Science and Nature etc. can have 6 days to complete a review report but I think e.g. Zootaxa would ceased to publish anything.
I agree that there are many expensive OA journals (and USD 3,000 is indeed very high), but there are many others that charge less than USD 500.
Reductions in APCs are also available upon request for those from specific regions in the world.
Dear Csaba Csuzdi and Michael John McAleer, thanks for your valueable sharing and suggestions.
Dear Nirmala S.V.S.G and Augustine Senanu Kukah thanks for your answers and support.
There are taxonomy journals which do not have excessive pages charges, some like Megadrilogica can publish peer reviewed papers in less than two months, if the reviewers submit there report in a timely fashion.
Try to follow the author instruction of that specific journal and check typing and grammar well before submitting manuscript
Providing research to a larger number of residents, for example, five evaluators and the selection of three or considering their evaluation is the result of acceptance or rejection of the research, but it is recommended that the evaluators who work highly professional.
Dear John Warren Reynolds, Numan Nafie Hameed, Shakir Tuleab and Michael John McAleer thanks for your answers.
The review period for manuscript cannot be shortened, as ample time should be given to the reviewers to critically analyse the article and give their valuable feedback.
Dear Rekha Rani Koduganti and Peter Breuer thanks for your answers.
Take into account main point of research. Additionally, the reviewer background and experience make good decision in short periods
Desk rejections are speedy, but they are also rejections.
Make the novelty, motivation and contents of the paper as clear as possible.
I agree with most of previous answers.
Lately, I am facing a problem that Editors cann't find a reviewers for the submited manuscripts.
So, manuscripts are in status reviewers invited for over a month.
Such situations prolong a review process period.
It can take much longer than one month to find suitable reviewers for a paper, even for Open Access journals.
In my past experience of submitting papers, I have had one case of desk rejection of my paper (after two weeks of submitting), in the journal American Mathematical Monthly (https://www.maa.org/press/periodicals/american-mathematical-monthly) given as follows (it seems a usual form of Monthly's desk rejection of articles and notes):
“Dear Professor Mestrovic,
I am writing about your paper "……………………………..," which you submitted to the The American Mathematical Monthly. I have reviewed your paper and discussed it with members of the Editorial Board.
After careful consideration of your paper and the mix of topics we hope to bring to the Monthly's readers, the board has decided to reject your manuscript. Here is a summary of the remarks I received on your paper from the Board.
“The Monthly is looking for articles and notes that bring interesting mathematical ideas to a wide audience of Monthly readers. Papers addressing a narrow topic with limited appeal to our broad audience are inappropriate. Moreover, standard research papers that assume the reader already knows the significance and context of the work are not suitable. The Board has determined that your paper falls into one of these categories and that we have no choice but to reject it.”
The decision to reject a manuscript is always difficult. The Monthly receives a large number of submissions each year, and we are able to publish only a small fraction of them. We regret that page limitations force us to turn away many fine papers.
as
Thank you for submitting your paper to the Monthly. We wish you luck in finding an appropriate journal for the publication of your work.
Yours sincerely,
…………………………..
Editor-in-Chief
The American Mathematical Monthly”
Through my experience as reviewer of international journals, I think the main reason of slow reviewing of manuscripts is there are no any type of payments to the reviewer who works in free of charge in such important jobs.
If you pay peanuts or bananas, you get monkeys.
If you want faster and better reviews, you need to pay more.
If you are not paying anything, you need to pay a lot more.
Dear Ali H. Wheeb, Chia-Lin Chang, Jelena B Popović-Djordjević, Michael John McAleer, Romeo Meštrović, Nirmala S.V.S.G, Osayed Sayed Mohamed Abu-Elyazeed thanks for your answers.
There is nothing one can do about it other than to be patient
Michael John McAleer excellent summary of the points so far. Now, I think the question now spring up from your point here.
Osayed: "I think the main reason of slow reviewing of manuscripts is there are no any type of payments to the reviewer who works in free of charge in such important jobs" - Uuuffff, a horribly dishonest attitude! To my knowledge, there is no death punishment for not being a reviewer! And as long as you are not forced to be a reviewer, there are only two honest solutions for you: accept it even without payment and do it as well (i.e. also as quickly!) as you would do for million dollars, or to refuse the request ("sorry, I am not willling to work without payment")!
Dear Oluwafemi Samson Balogun, Fares F. Fares, Kamoru A. Adedokun, Roman Bohdan Hołyński, Peter Breuer and Ahmed Saeed Mohmed thanks for your answers.
It is a matter of supply and demand, which depends on the prices and quantities offered.
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