Q: In ScholarOne, how do I interpret a quick change to 'Under Review' and the difference in the casing of 'review'?
I submitted a manuscript to a reputed journal using the ScholarOne system. Immediately after submission, one ADM was assigned, but MAL ADM (an abbreviation that is not known to me) was not assigned, and the status was ‘Under review.’ Just a few hours later, another ADM was assigned, but the status is the same. However, a strange observation is that the first letter of the word ‘review’ changed from the lowercase (‘review’) to the uppercase (‘Review’). Are there any explanations to the immediate change to ‘Under review’ and the slight change in the casing of the second word?
Journal statuses, even in established systems such as ScholarOne, are sometimes difficult to interpret. Here is what we believe the two actions mean.
Difference in casing of ‘r/Review’
ScholarOne released a new version recently (in February). Some of these changes may be a result of those updates. The difference in casing for the ‘r’ in ‘review’ seems to be one such. So, ‘Under review’ (with the lowercase ‘r’) seems to indicate an internal review and ‘Under Review’ (with the uppercase ‘r’) seems to indicate an external (peer) review. Here’s a related query we recently received around this same point: What does it mean if the status has been changing between 'Under review' and 'Assigning for review'?
The same seems to be the case with the status of ‘MAL ADM.’ While ‘ADM’ in ScholarOne refers to the administerial processing (done to check whether the manuscript follows the journal’s guidelines), we are not sure what ‘MAL’ could refer to. Perhaps it has something to do with the particular journal you submitted to, rather than with the ScholarOne system.
Swift change to ‘Under r/Review’
As mentioned above, ‘Under Review’ could mean that your manuscript has been sent for a peer review. However, it could also mean that it has progressed from the basic administration check to the associate editor (AE) check. You could wait for a week or two to see if the status changes. If not, you could contact the journal to find out the progress on your manuscript.
For more insights, here are some other queries on ScholarOne statuses:
This content belongs to the Journal submission & peer review Stage