Q: What should I do if my paper is showing "accepted" but the editor has asked for revision?
About one month ago, I got an e-mail from the journal editor asking me to revise my manuscript. I thought it was a major revision because I got this email for the first time after submission. However, the reviewers' opinion was that it was an interesting and well written article and no parts need to be corrected. The state of my manuscript is now "accepted" on the "manuscripts with decisions" dated on 05 - Mar - 2018 and under "pending transfer to production" stage. So, I thought the journal editor sent me the wrong email because he asked me to revise even though my manuscript's status was "accepted." I have emailed the editor twice and the ADM once to confirm whether my manuscript is accepted or not, but I have not heard from either of them. Now, my manuscript status is still showing “accepted,”, so I cannot upload any revised manuscript. If the manuscript is accepted, I should ideally get an email with the page proofs. However, I have not yet received this email as well. What should I do in this case? It is very troublesome. Your answer would be really helpful for me.
Sometimes, even if reviewers don't ask for revisions, the editor might suggest a few. However, from your question, it seems that the editor has just asked you to revise the paper, but has not made any specific suggestions for revision. Since the reviewers have not asked you to revise any portion of the content, there is no need to upload any other version.
The editor’s email could be a templated one, which he/she sends to all authors along with the reviewer comments. Since it’s rare for a paper to not receive any suggestions for revision from reviewers, the editor might have forgotten to change the content of the email. However, if the status is showing “accepted,” you have no reason to worry.
Sometimes there might be a time lag between acceptance and receiving page proofs of the article. This might be due to pending manuscripts that were accepted before yours that need to be published sooner. I’m sure you’ll receive the page proofs in a few weeks’ time. If there are any minor grammatical errors or minor revisions that are not content-related, the journal will contact you at the proofreading stage.
There is nothing much you can do but to follow up with the journal on a regular basis.
Related reading:
This content belongs to the Journal submission & peer review Stage