awaiting associate editor assignment meaning

After submitting

In this section:

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• Tracking your submission
• My paper has been accepted – what next?
• Appeals and rebuttals
• BMJ Article Transfer Service
• Abstracting and indexing
• Archiving, permissions and copyright
• Article metrics and alerts
• Correction and retraction policies
• Publication embargo
• Rapid responses

The review process

1. Awaiting Editorial Production Assistant Processing

The Editorial Production Assistant will carry out quality checks on your article at which point you may need to provide further information before your article is sent for Peer Review.

2. Awaiting Editor Assignment: 

Your article has passed initial quality checks by the Editorial Production Assistant and is in the process of being assigned to an appropriate Editor who will evaluate your article for scope, quality, and fit for the journal. Papers that do not meet these criteria will be rejected.

3. Awaiting Reviewer Selection

Your article meets the Journal’s scope and has been approved for peer review. The Editorial Team are in the process of finding suitable external expert reviewers that are available to review your article. Your article may also be sent to relevant Associate Editor’s for internal review. For most articles, a minimum of two reviews are required. Articles can be sent to multiple prospective reviewers before the required number are secured.

4. Peer Review in Progress

Your article has secured the minimum number of required reviewers. Peer reviewers are given 2 weeks to submit their review of your article. On the occasion that a reviewer withdraws from the process, the Editorial Team will begin the reviewer selection process again.

 5. Awaiting Editor Decision

Your article has now received the minimum number of reviews required to make a decision. The Editor will take into account the expert reviewers’ opinions to make an informed decision of accept, reject or revise.

6. In Production

Your article has been accepted and you will receive an email to confirm. Your article will move through the final quality checks and in to Production where it will be processed for publication. You will be emailed by the Production Editor with a timeline and be provided with a link to a platform called Publishing at Work where you can continue to track your article’s progress. More information about the Production process can be found here .

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How can I check the status of my submitted paper?

Modified on Fri, 27 Oct 2023 at 04:59 PM

To check the status of your submission in our system, log into your ScholarOne Manuscripts account, and click on “Author.” Under the Author Dashboard Section, click on “Submitted Manuscripts.” 

Please note that the following definitions generally apply to most journals. Each journal follows its own workflow, so some terms may not apply. Please contact the journal's editorial office for clarification.

Please see our resources on the peer review process and tips on How to Get Published .

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What does the status mean on my Sage Path account?

Modified on Thu, 27 Apr 2023 at 10:01 PM

The status tells you which stage the paper is in. Awaiting Editor Assignment is the most common status. During this stage we are inviting editors of journals to inquire if they are willing to accept your paper. This can take time as we await those responses.

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Submitted my paper. Now what?

Feb 18, 2022 | Scholarly publishing

There is something of an air of mystery as to what actually happens to your manuscript once you’ve pressed that “submit” button. It seemingly goes off into cyberspace and you are left playing the waiting game.

These days, if you’ve submitted to a journal via an online submission system, you will be able to track its progress to some extent as you will generally be able to see what stage it’s at. The names of these stages can, however, seem fairly vague and almost worse than no information at all.

So let’s translate them. There are many different submission systems and the stages a manuscript goes through during peer review does differ system to system (and, indeed, journal to journal), so for the purposes of this post we’re going to look at the most common stages of the most common submission site: ScholarOne (formally Manuscript Central).

First Steps

Initially your manuscript will go through stages such as “Awaiting Admin Checklist” and/or “Awaiting Editor Assignment” depending on how new submissions are initially checked on the journal. These stages tend to be moved through fairly swiftly as they are just the editorial team checking that your submission is suitable for peer review and then deciding which of the editors will be responsible for it during the process.

Awaiting Reviewer Selection

This is the first stage of the peer-review process and your manuscript will be here until the assigned Editor has selected some suitable experts to invite to review.

Once enough reviewers have been selected, the manuscript will move on to the next stage. If only one reviewer agrees to review and all the others decline the invitation, however, your manuscript may well return to this stage while the Editor selects more. So if you log in to check on progress several weeks after submission and find your manuscript at this stage, it doesn’t necessarily mean that no action has been taken.

Awaiting Reviewer Invitation

This means that potential reviewers have been selected, but have yet to be invited. Manuscripts quite often return to this stage if not enough of the invited reviewers accepted the invitation so further invitations need to be sent. It’s quite common for editors to select a lot of reviewers, but only invite a few at a time.

Awaiting Reviewer Assignment

This rather ambiguous stage is when reviewers have been invited, but we are waiting for the required number to agree to review. In other words, at this point, the ball is squarely in the reviewers’ court!

In an ideal world, enough of the invited reviewers will agree to review and your manuscript will move on to the next stage. In reality, however, it is quite normal for invited reviewers to be unavailable and for your manuscript to return to one of the earlier stages a couple of times.

Awaiting Reviewer Scores

This is the stage that the editorial team will be striving to get your manuscript to as swiftly as possible. If your manuscript is at this stage, then enough experts have agreed to read and evaluate it and we just need to wait for the reviewers to return their comments so that a decision can be taken.

Once through this stage, your manuscript will move on to a stage such as “Awaiting Recommendation” and/or “Awaiting Decision” and it generally won’t be long before a decision is sent to you.

So That’s It?

That’s it. There are, of course, many things that can cause delays to the process, but the majority of manuscripts move from one stage to the next fairly swiftly.

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15 Key Peer-Review Terminologies: The ABC of Research Publications

When we talk about peer-reviewed publications, we always tend to see they have a very specific language and set of ideas. That’s why it can be very important to learn some of the major key terms for the peer-review papers.

Let’s dive deeper into the peer-reviewed process and key terminologies!

1. Awaiting Editor Assignment

Awaiting Editor Assignment means that the manuscript is matching the scope of the journal, while also following the guidelines. At this point, the manuscript is ready to be sent to the associate editor, and they will go through with a lot more detail. The associate editor might say this is not suitable for publishing, yet the editor-in-chief is the one making the final decision.  

2. Assigning Reviewer

This means the editor was assigned, however, he needs to find 3-4 reviewers for this process. Sometimes, a reviewer might pull after he was assigned, due to conflict of interest, mismatching, or a lack of time. A journal will stay in this mode until the suitable peer reviewers are found for it.

3. Under Review

If the manuscript is Under Review, that means reviewers were found and they are assessing the work. It’s a crucial part of the peer-review process, and it can be a long one too. The length of this process varies based on how many reviewers are analyzing the manuscript, its length, complexity, and others.

4. Peer-review

Peer reviewing is a process where the manuscript is studied and then critiqued by experts in that field. Mostly, reviewers are  the anonymous  experts. Sometimes, the author also remains anonymous, so the reviewers remain unbiased and critique the content based on what’s available. This keeps a more objective approach.

5. Double-blind peer-review

The double-blind peer review term means the reviewer and author’s identity are hidden. This keeps any bias away, while making sure the review process is handled with integrity and professionalism.  

6. Awaiting recommendation

At this point in the review process, all the required reviews have arrived. However, in some cases the reviewers will have recommendations. If you see this, then most likely one of the reviewers said they have some recommendations, but they didn’t share them yet.

7. Awaiting decision

Now that all reviews and recommendations are in and the associate editor will forward the recommendations to  editor-in-chief  (EiC) , then it’s up to the editor-in-chief to choose whether the content is ready to publish or any new changes need to be made. Generally, the manuscript will either be rejected or accepted with some required changes (minor or major revision).

8. Rejected

In this situation, the editor-in-chief believes that the content is not suitable for publishing. Generally, he will ask for revisions or changes, and also point out what needs to be changed in order for the rejected manuscript to be accepted without any issues.

9. Accepted

If the manuscript is accepted, that means no revision is needed and everything is good to go. One thing to note is that such a situation is very rare. More often than not, a manuscript will go through numerous revisions before it’s ready to be published. That’s why it’s very important to understand most manuscripts will undergo revisions, sometimes major revisions, until they are ready to publish!

10. Major revision

This is the most common peer-review process replies/feedback. What does this mean? A major revision is showing you some of the ideas need to be revised and implemented. Peer reviewers usually state what needs to be modified and changed, based on the situation. This offers a very good idea regarding the state of the manuscript and what changes have to be made in order for this content to be approved.

11. Minor revision

A minor revision implies the fact that both the editor and reviewers think the author can modify the paper a bit to address some concerns. Sometimes, minor revisions don’t need another peer review, but the editor goes through everything. And, in some cases, a new round of minor revisions might be required depending on the situation. You don’t have to expect multiple rounds of minor revisions, but you must address what needs to be revised before everything gets published.

12. Open-access

Multiple peer-reviewed journals are sharing their articles with the public, researcher and science community without actively charging for a subscription. This means readers have free, direct access to the content. However, authors can be required to pay for the production and open access publishing.

13. Hybrid publication

As the name suggests, this journal type allows conventional publication, but also open access. It’s less common when compared to traditional publications, but it’s still an option that some people use in order to bring their journal in front of a larger audience. It’s up to the author to choose his own approach, and going the hybrid route can bring better exposure and higher quality results.

14. Copyright transfer

Once the manuscript is accepted, then the author must submit a copyright transfer form. What this does is whenever the form is signed, the journal receives all copyright and they can publish the content without a problem.

15. Camera-ready version

Having a camera-ready manuscript means that the manuscript is ready and it can be published. It’s all ready to print, so no changes need to be made. Initially, many thought that this term connects to the post-print version of the manuscript. But generally, camera-ready means the FINAL VERSION of the manuscript, which will be used for printing and publishing.

Understanding terms related to Peer-reviewed Journals is very important if you want to write a manuscript. These terms show what happens to the manuscript, how it’s reviewed, who reviews it, and so on. All this information is crucial because it shows how the process is managed, how it all comes together and what happens if the manuscript gets rejected.

In most cases, manuscripts go through multiple revisions until they are accepted. This is all normal, and a part of the review process. It can happen that a manuscript is accepted without any revisions, but this is rare. In general, you can expect to go through a few rounds of revisions, be it small or major.

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Peer Review and Decision Process

The Manuscript Status on ScholarOne displays “AE assigns reviewers,” if the number of agreed-reviewers is less than four.

The Manuscript Status on ScholarOne displays “Waiting for Reviewers’ Scores” if one or more agreed reviewers have not submitted their scores. TMI allows reviewers three weeks – may be extended per request – to complete the review.

TMI’s average turnaround time, from initial submission to decision, is about 7-weeks. However, the duration of an individual submission may vary drastically because there are many stochastic factors involved in the review process.

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