Speaker 1: Hello everyone, welcome to Research Hub. In this video, we are going to learn about the journal submission process, particularly what happens to your article after you submit it. So for young scholars, PhD students and master's students, it is often unknown how the journal submission process works, what happens to the article after the article has been submitted to the journal. So I am currently working as senior editor in two journals and also I am part of the editorial board for a few other journals and also I have published more than 30 journal articles and book chapters so far. So I can give you some insights on what happens to your article after you submit it to a journal. So here, to tell you what really happens to your article after it has been submitted, I have picked this image from an editorial material from a journal called WMU Journal of Maritime Affairs. And if you want to look up into the article, here is the source, you can look into this article. But now I am going to discuss this process in detail. So you see here, we have two processes, we have an initial process and then we have a review process, right? So let us first focus on the initial process. So here, you submit your article to the journal and it goes to the editor, editor-in-chief, EIC, okay? And nowadays, in most journals, before your article goes to the EIC, the journal manager will have a quick look on your article and check for plagiarism. And if you have submitted your article following the author guidelines mentioned in the journal, if you have missed any documents, for example, some journals now ask for declaration of conflict of interest. So if you have not submitted that, the journal manager will send you back the article. Nowadays, some journals made it mandatory to submit the author credit statement. So if you have not submitted that, they will send you back. And then you have to add that and submit again. So as soon as you submit, before it goes to editor-in-chief, normally nowadays it goes to a journal manager, okay? Who are normally not the academics, but they are the manager, journal manager from the publisher side, from the LCBR or from those publisher, publisher side, okay? So normally journal managers manages few journals, okay? So after the initial screening of meeting the author guidelines and also plagiarism check are met by the journal manager, they will send it to the EIC, the editor-in-chief or co-editor-in-chief. Some journals have multiple co-editor-in-chiefs, so then the journal manager sends it to the most readable editor-in-chief for your article. And as soon as the editor-in-chief receives your article, they will look into the article and make an initial decision. And here, actually, it is very important to make a good impression to the editor-in-chief because some journals, they receive like thousands of articles and the editor-in-chief handles like 1,000 or 500 articles in a year. They will spend maybe maximum 5 to 10 minutes to make the initial decision, whether it will go in the next step or it will get rejected, okay? So you really have to make a good impression. You have to have a cover letter where you have to write how your article is related to this journal, how it builds on this journal's previous studies, how your article contributes to the literature, so these kind of things you have to mention in the cover letter. And that's where the cover letter plays a big role. So let's say your article didn't have any significant contribution and the editor thought it is not good for your journal. Your article is not a good fit for the journal. Then you will get the rejection, okay? Sometimes the editor might have some other further comments and they can send you back the article before sending it to review, okay? So for example, it happened with me that one of the editors told me that the article is good, the idea is good, but we need to have more sample in our data, okay, more observations in our data. So the editor told us that, okay, the paper is good, we'll consider it, but please increase the sample size and send it again, okay? So it can happen also. But let's say now you pass the editorial decision, okay? The editor decided that the paper has some contribution, it fits with the journal's scope, and then they decide to pass it to the next step. So now here is the next step. It goes to the review process, okay? So now let's focus on this part. And we will have two parts for the review process. So let's say this is the first part, okay? And here, the journal, the editor-in-chief, if it's a big journal, then they will have several associate editors. And then the editor will send your article to an associate editor, okay? The associate editor who has more knowledge on a particular type of your article. So the editor will look into the article and try to decide which editor fits with the journal, and sends to the associate editor or senior editor to handle the manuscript. Or if it's a special issue article, then it goes to the guest editor to handle the manuscript, okay? So that's one thing. And sometimes if it's a small journal, or if there are not many associate editors, then the editor will send the article for review himself or herself, okay? And then here, in this case, if it was sent to the associate editors, they will send a paper for review. They will identify relevant reviewers. Often it's a good idea actually to list three or four suitable reviewers for your article on the cover letter. Some journals have the option where you can add them. Some journals don't have the options. But in those cases, you can add three or four suggested reviewers on the cover letter, okay? And here, if the editor thinks that, okay, for some journals, there are only one editor, not many associate editors. Often it's for the journals which are small or very focused on a particular topic, then the editor will send the papers for review himself or herself, okay? So when it goes to review, then often the criteria is that there will be minimum two reviewers who will submit the review reports. Sometimes it can take a long time to actually find the appropriate reviewers for your article. Sometimes I send to 25 reviewers to get three reviewers agree to review an article. Sometimes maybe it's only five, seven reviewers, and then three or four agrees to review the article. But it happens that sometimes I have to send 25, 30 reviewers to get like three or four reviewers for an article. And also, you know, if I need two review reports, then I would normally like to have like, say, three or four reviewers agree to review, because sometimes some of the reviewers, they agree to review, but they don't submit the review reports, right? So let's say your article went for review, okay? And then what happens is that the editor gets the review report. Normally it takes two to three months, but sometimes it can take like up to six months. And if you do not hear from the reviewer or the editor in six months, then it is a good idea to write a polite reminder to the editor-in-chief or to the journal manager that I would like to know the status of my article. But don't overdo this writing to the editors and journal managers for status of your article. Don't do it too often. Every three months, that's maybe okay, three to five months, but don't do it like every month you send an email or every week you send an email. Don't do that, okay? So as soon as the review reports arrive to some cases, it could be to the associated editors, okay? If I write like A, E, so associated editors or senior editors, sometimes it goes to them when the journal uses the associated editors. Then the associated editor will look into the review reports, and if majority of them say it's a major revision or minor revision, then associated editor will write to the EIC, editor-in-chief, that, okay, we give a revision here. If the associated editor sees that majority of the reviewers say that it's a rejection, then they will write to the EIC that it's a rejection. And if the EIC himself or herself was handling the paper, then they make the same decision based on the review comments. If majority gives a major revision, you get a major revision. If majority gives a rejection, then you get a rejection, okay? So if you get rejection, then you have to prepare it, try to address some of the comments and prepare for another journal. But most of the time, and most of the time actually it is very likely that you get a rejection. When I submit an article to journal, my initial hypothesis is that it is going to be rejected. And in the first round of revision, you never see this acceptance. It never happens. So it doesn't happen in the first round, okay? First round, you either get rejection or you get a minor or major changes. If I get this minor or major changes, I normally celebrate it. I feel like, okay, I'm one step closer to the acceptance. And normally I would celebrate this and we'll have a beer in the evening or a glass of wine. And yeah, so I'm often happy if I get a major revision, okay? And then when I get a major revision, then we start with this revise and resubmit process, okay? And I have another dedicated lecture on how to revise and resubmit an article. And then you revise and resubmit the article and you send it to the associate editor or the editor-in-chief in here, right? And then they look into your revision. Sometimes if the revision is good enough, they will recommend it for acceptance themselves. Sometimes if they are not sure, then they will send it again for the review to the same reviewers, okay? And the same reviewers may give you again some minor or major revisions, then you will resubmit it again. And then the associate editor or editor-in-chief will make a decision whether to accept it or not. Or if the reviewers say that, okay, we are happy, we accept the article, then you will get a review decision that, okay, we accept the article. So it is very common to have one round of revision. So in the first chance when you submit an article, you never get acceptance. That never happens. You normally get a major revision or reject. And in the second round revision, normally you will get a minor revision. If you really put effort in addressing all the review comments, then you are most likely to get a minor revision or an acceptance in the second round of revision. So it's very common that there will be like two, three rounds of revision in a manuscript in a good authentic journals. In fake journals, if you submit an article and if you pay some money, they will publish it immediately, okay? So don't go for those fake journals. Try to find authentic journals. Now sometimes the youngest scholars, we are very worried about the timeline, but how long it takes. So here the initial process, it can take about one to two weeks, okay? That's very common to take this process for one to two weeks. Some journals are very fast. They make a decision if they want to reject an article, they will do it like in three, four days, but normally it's one to two weeks time, okay? Then finding the reviewer and sending to the reviewer, it's again one to two weeks, okay? And after the article has been sent to the reviewer, normally most of the reviewers get about four week to 15 weeks of time to submit the revision, okay? So minimum is four week in many journals, but maximum it could be like 15 weeks, up to three, four months in really high rated journals, where the review qualities are really top class. So in those journals, they often give like three months to their reviewers to submit the reviews, okay? And after the reviews are received, to hear from the editors, it will take you, let's say, again, maybe one to two weeks in this process, okay? So in total, you see, the whole process can take about three to six months easily for the first round. If you get a major revision and you resubmit it again, then you add again four to 15 weeks, depending on the journal, okay? Because every round when the editor or associate editor sends the article for revision, they give the reviewers one month to two, three months for the reviews. Normally in the second round of revision, they give the reviewers a lower time limit. Let's say in the first round, if they have given like 15 weeks, in the second round, they would maybe give 10 weeks to the reviewers. But the journals which give like four weeks, they would normally give four weeks for each round of revision to the reviewers, okay? So in general, in a decent journal, the whole publication process can take minimum six months. I have hardly seen any paper published in less than five months from the submission to the publication, and the normal is like 12 months, okay? So if you submit an article in a decent journal, it takes six to twelve months in general, most of the time. I have publications which actually took us about four years in total with four or five rounds of revision, but those were like really high-level journals and the reviews were really like very detailed with very nitty-gritty and the paper improved a lot, okay? So that was not a problem at all that it took four years. And normally when you have like few papers under review in the journals, you will have a pipeline and then if it takes like one year or six months, it doesn't matter, okay? You will often forget about it if you're busy with teaching and then it takes like you have four or five articles under review, then you will not really think too much about the six months or twelve months. And most of the articles that we publish, normally they, particularly in social science, it should have some impact over like 10-20 years. So if it takes one month, it's not really a problem in my opinion, okay? But for medical science or like computer science, it is often crucial that the papers are published within like two, three months, okay? And those journals are often very fast in medical science and computer science. So by now, I hope that you really have a good idea about the whole journal process and what happens to your article after you submit the article. I believe you found the video useful and you now have a very clear idea of what happens to an article after you submit to the journal. Thank you.