Behind the Scenes of Journal Decisions
by Geraldine S. Pearson
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association
Several years ago, I submitted a scholarly paper to a renowned psychiatric journal (not published by SAGE!). I had labored with my team to get this polished and ready for submission. We all sighed in relief when it was sent, all consents and requirements in place. Then we waited, and waited, and waited. After six months with no acknowledgment of receipt I emailed the editor responsible for that section of the journal. The response was that, yes they had received the paper, and no, it had not been reviewed. The journal could offer no timeline and the individual stated that they were “backlogged” with submissions. While tempted to withdraw the paper, I decided, with my team, to give the process three more months. Within that time the paper was reviewed, revisions recommended, and eventually, 18 months after submission, it was published.
At the time, I was not a journal editor and the process that occurred after manuscript submission was somewhat mysterious and unclear. The recent explosion of information about journals, publication ethics, and transparency (about the process of submission, peer review, and decision) has been advantageous for authors. The process can be different for each journal based on numbers of submissions, publication frequency, and staff resources that are committed to publishing the journal either online or in print. Here I will discuss some of that process for my journal.
I edit a small, society-owned journal, published by SAGE, focused on psychiatric nursing. The submitted manuscripts are a mix of research, reviews, and discussion article types. The journal receives approximately 150 submissions a year with a part-time dedicated editor, associate editor, and managing editor. SAGE is always behind the scenes offering support. The journal issues are published in print and online, with early availability of accepted papers in online first.
Before you Submit
Obviously, the process of submission and review to a small journal will differ from that of a large journal with thousands of submissions and many fulltime staff to handle the peer review process. It is wise for an author to investigate the process, size, and requirements of a journal prior to submission. Authors may want to ask the following questions:
Is the editor willing to answer questions?
What are the journal’s citation metrics?
Does my paper match the goals and philosophy of the journal?
How long does the review process generally take?
Please be assured that your paper is likely being sent to reviewers but it can take time for this process to evolve. I try never to have an author do more than one revision to a paper before rejecting it, if need be. While often difficult to accomplish, I always work to have the same reviewers look at the revised paper. This is not, however, always possible.
What happens after a paper is submitted to the journal?
The first action involves the managing editor reviewing the manuscript for basic formatting requirements that will enable ease of peer review, confirming that all authors meet the authorship requirements by submitting the signed author form, ensuring authors’ conflicts of interest have been declared, and checking that the paper has been blinded for review.
The paper then goes to either the editor or associate editor for a bench review. During this process the manuscript is read for acceptability to the journal’s aims and scope and for acknowledgment of internal review board involvement prior to conducting the research. All papers are submitted to iThenticate for identification of overlap with published literature. The editor then reviews the CrossCheck report and may return a paper to an author if there is an inappropriate level of overlap. Specifically, the paper is reviewed for passages or information that is not referenced properly and/or may have been duplicated from another source. Language issues, such as poor sentence structure and grammar, might also result in a return to the author and recommendation for language editing prior to blinded review. The paper might also be rejected if the language issues cannot be easily corrected.
The paper is then ready to enter the peer review process. My journal has a panel of reviewers who have agreed to participate as reviewers. They have indicated, through a list of keywords, the topical areas in which they are comfortable reviewing. SAGE Track, the platform used for submission and peer review, allows the editor to identify individuals who have indicated expertise in a particular area. Statistics on numbers of past reviews, time since last review, and a rating score are all available to the editor who is choosing reviewers.
The tricky part for the editor comes in choosing enough potential reviewers to obtain the minimum of two reviewers needed to adequately judge the acceptability of a paper. I believe this is a universal problem for journals, especially those like mine that do not offer significant journal-specific incentives for reviewing. Examples of types of reviewer incentives include continuing education units for performing a review; recognition on PUBLONS; and individual journal incentives, including discounts on other products from the publisher. SAGE also offers reviewer rewards to its reviewers in the form of free journal access and product discounts.
The reality is that reviewers are sometimes difficult to engage. This can be influenced by time of year on the academic calendar, vacation months, or just not having the time to review. The recent pandemic crisis forced many academicians to re-tool their teaching to an online process. This took away from time individuals would usually devote to reviewing papers.
Editors’ actions can involve inviting multiple reviewers to obtain the required two individuals and weeding out the reviewers who don’t respond or automatically decline and reassigning new people. Sometimes the received reviews are divergent and require a third or fourth reviewer to give an accurate guide for the editor’s decision about a paper.
In conclusion, authors are encouraged to always ask questions by emailing the editor or editorial staff. While this can be an intimidating process, it is completely acceptable. You are entitled to an understanding of the journal processes, average times to acceptance, and time frames for reviews. After all, you are placing your valuable paper into the trusted care of a journal editor!
About the author
