Authors’ right to know the real status of their submissions

Some research journals utilize online systems for scientists to submit articles. Unfortunately, once an article is submitted to some of these journals, the status of the article is shown as “under review.” This can be frustrating for authors, who have the right to know the real status of their papers after spending months conducting research and submitting their results in the form of research articles to journals.

Sometimes editors are very slow to act, either by sending articles to reviewers (referees) late or by ignoring articles that have not been agreed upon for review. In the latter case, some editors even fail to invite new reviewers on time. Adding to the problem, some reviewers do not respond to editors’ invitations and leave articles in an unknown status. Whether it is because reviewers are too busy or they do not respect deadlines, some of them often reply weeks after the deadline. Moreover, some editors neglect to send reminders.

Many researchers have had negative experiences with journals that do not accurately report the status of submissions.

As editor-in-chief of a number of journals, I make sure that all the reviewing processes are very clear to authors. The statuses we use are as follows:

• Submitted to journal

• With editor (for pre-evaluation and reviewer invitation)

• Reviewer invited

• Under review

• Reviews completed

• With editor (for decision-making)

I believe that journals should consider changing their current method of updating authors on the status of their papers. Editors-in-chief are expected to respond to emails from all authors at their earliest convenience. While I understand that editors may not be happy with authors constantly emailing them for updates, it has been proven that most authors are aware of the typical timeline and average time for decisions on papers in their field or specific journals and are willing to wait patiently.

Mox Sal Moslehian is a professor of mathematics and a fellow of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). His research focuses on functional analysis and operator theory. He serves as the editor-in-chief of the journals Banach Journal of Mathematical Analysis, Annals of Functional Analysis and Advances in Operator Theory, published by Birkhäuser/Springer. His homepage is https://prof.um.ac.ir/moslehian/. moslehian@um.ac.ir