Q: Why did they ask me to recommend reviewers after a minor revision decision?

Detailed Question -

I submitted a paper to an international journal earlier this year. In August, I received a minor revision decision letter from the reviewer and a request from the editor to send the revised paper according to the specified format.

For about two weeks, I carefully revised and then resubmitted the paper. However, there was no response for a month. So, I sent an inquiry email. The editor said that five reviewers declined to review due to the COVID-19 situation, and requested me to recommend three reviewers.

In my knowledge, if it’s a minor revision, generally, the first-round reviewers would review the revised paper or the editor would decide. Is there any reason to send the review to another reviewer as seems to have happened here? I’m confused about this situation as it is not as per the initial submission process.

1 Answer to this question
Answer:

You are right. This is a bit unusual. Another unusual thing is you having received a mail from the reviewer. The reviewer notifies the editor through the system, but no mail goes directly to the author – unless you meant you somehow received this notification or have access to it on the system.

Anyway, one reason for the editor asking for additional reviewers now could be due to the nature or topic of the paper. Perhaps, during the second round, the editor thought it needed a second opinion and therefore sent it to new reviewers. You may find echoes of your situation (the editor deciding to refer to multiple new editors after one round of revision) in this somewhat similar query by another researcher recently: I would like to ask you how to protest against the rejection of a paper.

You should write to the editor asking for more information about this. If their response is appropriate/satisfactory, we think you can go ahead and suggest some reviewers if you know them. In case you don’t, as a final option, you may consider withdrawing the paper from here and submitting to another journal. If you decide to exercise this option, it would be better to first send a presubmission inquiry to the other journal(s) with a background to the paper. In case you are worried that the withdrawal procedure and submission to another journal may impact the timeline for publication, you can consider the fact that the paper needed only a minor revision here and may possibly require fewer changes after submission to another journal.

Hope that helps. For more insights and information into journal decision-making, you may find these articles useful:

All the best for the next steps on your paper!

Comment