Q: What does the status change from "All reviews complete" to "Under review" mean?
I submitted a paper to some philosophy journal 3 month ago. Since then, the status of the manuscript has changed from "With Editor" (for about 2.5 months), to "Under review" (for a day), "All Reviews Complete" (for 2-3 days), and then "Under Review" (for about 2 weeks now). What does this mean?
The status changes you mention are slightly unusual. External peer review would not be completed in a few days’ time. My guess is that the first "Under review" appeared when the first reviewer accepted the review invitation. Going by this logic, "All reviews complete" seem to indicate that all the reviewers have accepted the review invitation. This status remained for 2-3 days and then changed back to "Under review" to indicate that the actual peer review has started. However, it would be best to write to the journal to get a clear picture of what is going on at the backend.
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This content belongs to the Journal submission & peer review Stage