awaiting reviewer assignment and awaiting reviewer selection

[email protected]

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.

• Company information and news
• Scholarly publishing
• Testimonials
• Company Statements
•  Privacy Notice
• Terms & Conditions
• Modern Slavery Statement
• Equality, Diversity & Inclusion
• Anti-Bribery Statement

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.

• University of British Columbia

Why the manuscript submission status changed from ‘Under review’ to ‘Awaiting Reviewer Assignment’ in Manuscript Central?

Most recent answer.

Popular answers (1)

Get help with your research

Join ResearchGate to ask questions, get input, and advance your work.

All Answers (12)

Similar questions and discussions

• Asked 19th Nov, 2020

• Asked 9th Aug, 2023

• Asked 1st Jun, 2020

• Asked 3rd Jul, 2022

• Asked 4th Aug, 2021

• Asked 23rd Jul, 2021
• Asked 13th Mar, 2022

• Asked 28th Feb, 2022
• Asked 24th Jun, 2023

Related Publications

• Recruit researchers
• Join for free
• Login Email Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google Welcome back! Please log in. Email · Hint Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google No account? Sign up

Stack Exchange Network

Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow , the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers.

Q&A for work

Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search.

"Awaiting Reviewer Invitation" after "Acceptance with Minor Revision"

I have submitted an article (media and communication studies) to a ScholarOne journal. The paper was accepted with minor revision (two reviewers both recommended 'minor revision'). I revised the paper accordingly and addressed the feedbacks. After submitting the revised article for a week, a ADM was assigned and the status has changed to "awaiting reviewer invitation." Does it mean that my paper will go through another round of review with new reviewers? I was told that for paper with "minor revision," it is likely like it will not be sent back to the reviewers. Has anyone experienced similar situation?

• publications

• 1 It is completely normal for papers with minor revisions to go through more than one round of revisions. If the editors deem ir necessary and the reviewers that volunteered for the first round of the review are unavailable, they might need to invite new ones. –  Sursula Commented May 6, 2021 at 6:35

2 Answers 2

Does it mean your paper will go through another round of review? Not necessarily. It depends on whether the editor invites new reviewers. "Awaiting reviewer invitation" should strictly be a very brief status, since the time between the editor deciding to invite reviewers and the editor actually inviting reviewers should be very brief, on the order of a few minutes. The fact that you are apparently seeing this status for more than a brief moment indicates that the journal is using it as a substitute for "Editor assigned".

You can think about the timeline as so:

• Your paper is resubmitted. Status shows "Revision submitted to journal".
• Either the desk editor (i.e. the employee of the publisher assigned to the journal) or the editor-in-chief assigns an editorial board member to handle the paper. Here the status could show "Editor assigned", or it could show "awaiting reviewer invitation".
• The editorial board member could make a decision now, or they could go ahead and invite reviewers. It depends on how substantial the changes requested are, and whether the editor is able to check it himself.

I don't know what "awaiting reviewer invitation" means.

But usually, the paper with minor revision will be sent directly back to the same reviewers for the final decision. They need to check whether you revise according to their reviews.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for browse other questions tagged publications ..

• Featured on Meta
• Upcoming sign-up experiments related to tags

Hot Network Questions

• What was Jessica and the Bene Gesserit's game plan if Paul failed the test?
• Why is "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously" considered meaningless?
• Is a possessive apostrophe appropriate in the verb phrase 'to save someone something'?
• Surfing social media is one of the most, if not the most popular ______ among my friends => pastime or pastimes?
• Who is the "Sir Oracle" being referenced in "Dracula"?
• tnih neddih eht kcehc
• How can I have two plots progress on different rates of time?
• Protocol Used by the \oldstylenums Command to Display Digits
• Meaning of "virō" in description of Lavinia
• Why is the Newcomb problem confusing?
• How can you destroy a mage hand?
• Bound states between neutrinos using Schrödinger's equation?
• How do I make an access hole in a chain link fence for chickens?
• Can a Tidally-Breathing Animal Possess a Syrinx?
• How can non-residents apply for rejsegaranti with Nordjyllands Trafikselskab?
• Find 10 float64s that give the least accurate sum
• Is there any way to play Runescape singleplayer?
• UTF-8 characters in POSIX shell script *comments* - anything against it?
• Is it a "shifting of the burden of proof" if I show evidence in favor of a position, and ask the audience to debate that evidence if they disagree?
• How should I end a campaign only the passive players are enjoying?
• Parts of the Edit Page
• Is there a name for books in which the narrator isn't the protagonist but someone who know them well?
• What is the difference between a group representation and an isomorphism to GL(n,R)?
• Audio engineering: amplifying two different sources