Q: What does a change from "awaiting editorial decision" back to "under review" mean?

Detailed Question -

Hi everyone, I am a bit confused and wanted to bug you about something. I submitted my manuscript via ScholarOne and within 2 days my status went from "editor assigned" to "under review". Then in 3 weeks it was "awaiting reviewer reports" and yesterday finally "awaiting editorial decision". I was thrilled because I thought that might mean I'll get an answer quite soon. Unfortunately I looked today and it says "under review" again. I read this as a fairly bad sign: I feel I must have got at least one bad review and the editor decided to send it out to a third reviewer or wants to review it him/herself as the reviewers have given different opinions. Nevertheless, I wanted to ask whether anyone has experience with this, and what the outcome was. Thank you!!!

7 Answers to this question
Answer: In scholarone, under review indicates as i think both internal and external reviewing process so i think that the first under review status meant editorial board chacking whichق was succesfully passed and the manuscript was sent for external reviewing so the second under review status appeared.
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Answer: But in between there was already a status saying "awaiting reviewer reports", which as I understand means the external review was already going on until it said "awaiting editorial decisions...and then it said under review again..
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Answer: But thank you very much for your reply :)
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Answer: It is hard to believe that the paper was sent to external reviwers within 2 days after submission. It takes at least 2 weeks to send an invitation and recieve the answer which may be decline or accept the invitation. Therfore and in my opinion, the first status was for the associate (handling) editor and the second was for the reviwers.
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Answer: Ok thank you, I think I don't express myself well enough. Yes the first "under review" was administrative but then after 3 weeks they probably found reviewers since the status said "awaiting reviewer reports"-so it's not after 2 days but 3 weeks. So that was the status for external review for the last 2 months and then it changed to "awaiting decision"...so it either is a second round of external review or some form of second internal review I guess...
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Answer:

This is a fairly common scenario in the journal review process. The fact that the editor decided to send your paper to another reviewer isn't really a bad sign: in fact, it shows that your editor doesn't want to take a hasty decision and is trying to ensure that your manuscript gets a fair judgment. Generally, a manuscript is sent for an additional review if one of the reviews received is weak or if the reviewers have contraditory opinions on your manuscript. However, this does not reflect on the quality of your manuscript: in fact, it might reflect on the quality of the review (in case of a weak review). So don't worry, it is good for you that the editor wants to be really sure before taking a decision on your paper.

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    Answer:

    Hello,

    I am in a similar situation. Just curious to know what was the final outcome for your manuscript?

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