Dear Network,
I have recently noticed that the editorial process of many journals (the time between the first submission till starting the review process) has been noticeably increased; the status of the submitted papers takes between 20 to 30 days "with editor".
The more terrible point is that after 30 days of with editor status, the editor rejects the paper by stating some reasons such as "out of scope, below publication standard, etc."
Have you faced such a problem over the last 6 months?
Do you think should the editors speed up the process?
Amin
I went through the same experience. It took 6 weeks just to inform me they had a lot of submissions and they had to be very selective. It was for a case report.
I make sure besides for the review process anything admin related I push for it not to take long by writing to editor before and after the review.
Simply avoid such journals where Editors state reasons such as "out of scope, below publication standard, etc.after six months from submission
Amin - what you describe is, in my mind, a natural side-effect of the competitiveness of the publishing industry. It's not necessarily, that editors are to 'blame'. They can often be overwhelmed with the amount of manuscript submissions - and so it takes time to get to them to initially screen - and then their reasons may not be that detailed - and conform to a 'standard' response i.e. out-of-scope when that really means 'not as in-scope as the many submissions we have'.
Amin
I went through the same experience. It took 6 weeks just to inform me they had a lot of submissions and they had to be very selective. It was for a case report.
I make sure besides for the review process anything admin related I push for it not to take long by writing to editor before and after the review.
Oh Yes, indeed!!!!
But I took these as pointers to explore other reputed and equally worthy Journals every time. Also, I made it a point not to submit to those journals again, i.e. the types with symptoms you have mentioned about.
Philosophically, In this Big Big world, we, with our tiny tiny existence, are putting efforts to establish the outcomes of our hard work. If one doesn't even agree to give us a fair chance of review, what, then, stops us from reciprocating?
In my opinion,. papers get accepted far too quickly. The quality of peer review has declined terribly in the last two decades. Almost any paper published since 2000 in my field has major flaws and it is obvious from the list of editors that they don't understand the science, either.
I'm at the point that I simply cannot trust any modern peer-reviewed paper, especially if it took less than a month from submission to publication. That's ridiculous.
In my opinion if MSS are out of scope they should be returned immediately
Manuscripts should be assessed in the order they are received. If you submit to a popular journal then you wait your turn. You should be able to decide if your manuscript is out of scope. Read the journal's website, look at what does get published. Be patient. Don't feel entitled to receive special treatment.
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