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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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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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Awaiting Reviewer Assignment means the journal editor has started reaching out to potential reviewers for your manuscript. Awaiting Reviewer Selection, which is the next stage, means that the editor has received responses from multiple peer reviewers and is presently in the process of making a selection among them. For most manuscripts, in the ...
I submitted an article 5 months ago to a journal. Since then, the article has been jumping between "Waiting for Reviewer Assignment" and "Contacting Potential Reviewers" (10 changes of status now).The article is quite technical and multidisciplinary, so I understand that finding reviewers is hard.
The manuscript status has changed from "Under Review" to "Awaiting Reviewer Scores". ... " status has always meant that the paper was actually with the reviewers as opposed to with the AE waiting for the assignment; papers have been in the "Under review" status for me for several months after which they change to "Awaiting AE recommendation ...
1. It typically means that the paper has been received, has been put in the work queue of the editor, but the editor has not assigned reviewers. Or (in one system I know of), that the editor has not assigned the necessary number of reviewers. That could be because the system requires four reviewers, but the editor has only gotten the commitment ...
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 ...
Manuscript status: Meaning: Manuscript Submitted: This means the author has successfully submitted and approved the manuscript. After this, the manuscript usually goes through a formatting check by the journal staff before it is assigned to an editor. Awaiting Admin Processing: Your submission is waiting for initial review by the editorial office.
Awaiting allocation: The paper has been assigned to the Editor but has not yet been sent to reviewers (however, the Editor may have assigned the manuscript to an Associate Editor - there is no separate system status to indicate this). The Action Editor may decide to make a decision without allocating reviewers.
My manuscript submission status in manuscriptcentral changed from 'Awaiting Reviewer Assignment' to 'under review' last three days ago. But today suddenly the status changed back to ...
My manuscript submission status in manuscriptcentral changed from 'Awaiting Reviewer Assignment' to 'under review' last three days ago. But today suddenly the status changed back to ...
Reviewer Assignment:The status "awaiting reviewer assignment" indicates that the editorial team is in the process of selecting and assigning new reviewers to evaluate your revised manuscript ...
The editor selects a number of potential referees to review the manuscript. Should a referee decline to review or not perform the review in a certain time (as given by the editor or journal), the editor usually has to select a new referee. ... Some editorial systems give the status as with editors, awaiting reviewer assignment (or similar) if a ...
As a Reviewer of a manuscript, your input is a crucial part of the peer review process. This guide is intended to give an overview of the Reviewer function in ScholarOne Manuscripts. The Review Process The steps below are the high-level steps in the review process. This document will describe each of these steps in detail.
A plausible guess is that the editorial software uses "awaiting reviewer selection" to mean that the manuscript has been received but has not been sent to a reviewer. If the manuscript is only going to be checked by an editor and not by an external reviewer, then, of course, it's in the situation I described --- received and not sent to a ...
My manuscript submission status in manuscriptcentral changed from 'Awaiting Reviewer Assignment' to 'under review' last three days ago. But today suddenly the status changed back to ...
1. I submitted a short paper to a math journal more that one month ago. The status is still "awaiting assignment" and I checked the online system which shows that even no editor has been assigned to my paper. I sent two emails about updating the status of the paper to editor and Editor-in-Chief several days ago and I got no reply from them.
Coming to your present query, as we just indicated, this has been a slow change from 'Awaiting Reviewer Assignment' to 'Under Review.' But this could be because the associate editor (AE) may have had a challenge finding reviewers for your manuscript. ... Anyway, they seem to have found the required number of peer reviewers now, and your ...
It has been 1.5 months with no change in status. I'm curious if we are still waiting for reviewers to accept the review of the manuscript, like Awaiting Reviewer Invitation, or it's different, and the reviewing process is started already. Another matter is the process of peer review from the aspect of a reviewer.
My manuscript submission status in manuscriptcentral changed from 'Awaiting Reviewer Assignment' to 'under review' last three days ago. But today suddenly the status changed back to ...
1 Answer to this question. Answer: This means that your manuscript has not yet been assigned to a reviewer. In this stage, the editor identifies a few reviewers for your paper and sends out email invitations to them. Once the required number of reviewers accept the review invitation, the status changes to "Under review."