A recent submission to (and rejection from) Psychological Science has provided me with enough information on the editorial process, via Manuscript Central, to blog a follow-up to my Elsevier Editorial System blog of 2011. (I’m not the only person who is making public their manuscript statuses either, see also Guanyang Zhang’s original and most recent posts.)
Below is the chronology for the status updates a submission from my lab received from Psychological Science. As stated in the confirmation-of-submission letter received from the Editor-in-Chief, the process of obtaining a first decision should take up to 8 weeks from initial submission.
Triage
- “Awaiting Initial Review Evaluation” – 09/01/2013: The manuscript is submitted and awaits triage, where it is read by two members of the editorial team. An email is sent to the corresponding author from the Editor-in-Chief. The triage process takes up to two weeks and determines whether or not the manuscript will go out for full review.
Full Review
- “Awaiting Reviewer Selection” – 22/01/2013: An email is sent to the corresponding author from the Editor-in-Chief informing them that the manuscript has passed the triage initial review process. The extended review process is stated as lasting 6-8 weeks from receipt of this email.
- “Awaiting Reviewer Assignment” – 28/01/2013
- “Awaiting Reviewer Invitation” – 28/01/2013
- “Awaiting Reviewer Assignment” – 29/01/2013
- “Awaiting Reviewer Selection” – 29/01/2013: I may have missed some status updates here. Essentially, I think these status updates reflect the Associate Editor inviting reviewers to review the manuscript and the reviewers choosing whether or not to accept the invitation.
- “Awaiting Reviewer Scores” – 05/02/2013: The reviewers have agreed to review the manuscript and the Manuscript Central review system awaits their reviews.
- “Awaiting AE Decision” – 15/03/2013: The reviewers have submitted their reviews, which the Associate Editor uses to make a decision about the manuscript
- “Decline” – 16/03/2013: An email is sent to the corresponding author from the Associate Editor informing them of the decision and providing feedback from the reviewers.
The whole process took just under ten weeks, so not quite within the 8 week estimate that the initial confirmation-of-submission email suggested.
It’s a shame that I can’t blog the status updates post-acceptance, but the final status update is supposedly what 89% of submissions to Psychological Science will end with. Onwards.
