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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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Assigning an Associate Editor/Guest Editor

One method of accepting a paper is to assign an Associate Editor or Guest Editor. Follow the steps below to complete the process.

Go to Editor Center > Papers > In Progress from the administrative toolbar. This will bring you to the View Papers page where you will be able to view paper status by category.

Click on the plus sign (+) next to the category heading Papers Awaiting AE/GE Assignment . You will see the following fields.

Paper number. This is the unique identifier associated with an author’s work. It consists of the journal abbreviation, the year of submittal, and a five-digit number.

Paper title. To view the full title, click on View Title . The title will pop up. (The full title is not shown to save space.)

Paper type. This indicates the type of submission.

Author Name. The primary/corresponding author of the technical work.

Click on a paper number to view the paper status. A new window will open with the Paper Details , as well as administrative options.  

Choose the button Assign AE/GE .

Select an Associate Editor from the pull-down menu.

If an Associate Editor or Guest Editor is not available, click on the link Add AE/GE to create a new account. A new window will open allowing you to create an account. For more information, visit Managing Associate Editors/Guest Editors .

If you’re unsure of which Associate Editor or Guest Editor to choose, select an individual from the pull-down menu on the right and click on the links Bio , Workload or History to find out more information.

Submit your choice to assign the paper.

NOTE : You can also assign an Associate Editor or Guest Editor by going to Editor Center > AE/GE > Assign AE/GE from the administrative toolbar.

The peer review process

The peer review process can be broadly summarized into 10 steps, although these steps can vary slightly between journals. Explore what’s involved, below.

Editor Feedback: “Reviewers should remember that they are representing the readers of the journal. Will the readers of this particular journal find this informative and useful?”

1. Submission of Paper

The corresponding or submitting author submits the paper to the journal. This is usually via an online system such as ScholarOne Manuscripts. Occasionally, journals may accept submissions by email.

2. Editorial Office Assessment

The Editorial Office checks that the paper adheres to the requirements described in the journal’s Author Guidelines. The quality of the paper is not assessed at this point.

3. Appraisal by the Editor-in-Chief (EIC)

The EIC checks assesses the paper, considering its scope, originality and merits. The EiC may reject the paper at this stage.

4. EIC Assigns an Associate Editor (AE)

Some journals have Associate Editors ( or equivalent ) who handle the peer review. If they do, they would be assigned at this stage.

5. Invitation to Reviewers

The handling editor sends invitations to individuals he or she believes would be appropriate reviewers. As responses are received, further invitations are issued, if necessary, until the required number of reviewers is secured– commonly this is 2, but there is some variation between journals.

6. Response to Invitations

Potential reviewers consider the invitation against their own expertise, conflicts of interest and availability. They then accept or decline the invitation to review. If possible, when declining, they might also suggest alternative reviewers.

7. Review is Conducted

The reviewer sets time aside to read the paper several times. The first read is used to form an initial impression of the work. If major problems are found at this stage, the reviewer may feel comfortable rejecting the paper without further work. Otherwise, they will read the paper several more times, taking notes to build a detailed point-by-point review. The review is then submitted to the journal, with the reviewer’s recommendation (e.g. to revise, accept or reject the paper).

8. Journal Evaluates the Reviews

The handling editor considers all the returned reviews before making a decision. If the reviews differ widely, the editor may invite an additional reviewer so as to get an extra opinion before making a decision.

9. The Decision is Communicated

The editor sends a decision email to the author including any relevant reviewer comments. Comments will be anonymous if the journal follows a single-anonymous or double-anonymous peer review model. Journals with following an open or transparent peer review model will share the identities of the reviewers with the author(s).

10. Next Steps

An editor's perspective.

Listen to a podcast from Roger Watson, Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Advanced Nursing, as he discusses 'The peer review process'.

If accepted , the paper is sent to production. If the article is rejected or sent back for either major or minor revision , the handling editor should include constructive comments from the reviewers to help the author improve the article. At this point, reviewers should also be sent an email or letter letting them know the outcome of their review. If the paper was sent back for revision , the reviewers should expect to receive a new version, unless they have opted out of further participation. However, where only minor changes were requested this follow-up review might be done by the handling editor.

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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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After submitting

In this section:

• NEW! Featured Author Support
• 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 peer review process

When you have submitted your manuscript successfully the next step is peer review.

Types of peer review

BMJ mainly operates the following types of peer review:

• Open peer review: Reviewer and author are known to each other. These journals publish the reviewer comments and previous versions of the manuscript alongside the accepted paper.
• Single anonymised peer review: The names of the reviewers are hidden from the author. This is the traditional method of reviewing and is the most common.
• Double anonymised peer review: Both the reviewer and the author are anonymous to each other.
• Triple anonymised peer review: The handling editor, reviewer and author are anonymous to each other.

Each journal offers a different type of peer review, so please check on their individual websites for details.

Peer 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 .

While we aim to complete the peer review process as quickly as possible, please bear in mind that reviewers give their time voluntarily. There may be occasions where several reviewers are invited before the required number can be arranged, or when a reviewer fails to deliver a review and the invitation process needs to start again. The average time to first decision is published on each journal’s website.

Article provenance

BMJ is committed to transparency. Every article we publish includes a description of its provenance (commissioned or not commissioned) and whether it was internally or externally peer reviewed. Articles described as ‘internally peer reviewed’ will have been assessed by one or more of the journal’s editors.

How long do I await the “awaiting EIC decision”?

We submitted a paper to a journal roughly 3 months back, the paper remained under review for almost 2 months, after which upon enquiry to the AE, we received a reply that one review has been completed while the other is pending due to certain reasons. But, quickly after this, the status changed to “awaiting EIC decision” within 2 weeks and is stuck at that for 3 weeks. I have heard from my peers and other co-researchers and investigators, that the EIC decision should not be taking so long. Whether a long time at this status hints towards a negative outcome. And should we be writing to EIC enquiring about the status? if yes, what should be communicated and how?

It is good that you are keeping a close watch on your manuscript’s progress. From your side, your eagerness to get through the process is understandable. On the journal’s side, although slowly, but the manuscript seems to be progressing. Peer review is a crucial step through the process and since your process was run through double peer reviews, the amount of time taken could be justified. Also, please note that peer reviewers are quite busy too. Also, EIC decision could be pending because they may not have picked up the manuscript yet. Finally, delayed decision does not indicate a negative outcome. From the manuscript progress, it looks like there has been a good progress.

However, it is quite reasonable to write to the editor requesting an update on your manuscript. You could draft a reminder mail and reiterate the timelines that were followed for your submitted paper, and request for an update on the current status. Your tone of communication can be calm and humble, and you would know not to push them too much. All the best!

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