The Philosophers' Cocoon

3 responses to “Does time under review predict particular editorial decisions?”

1. Anonymous

   April 17, 2026

   I am sceptical about the claim that rejected papers take longer in the review process. Personally, I take the same amount of time to review all papers, whether I am recommending accept, revisions, or reject. In fact, I am very quick. I have reports in within 3 to 10 days of agreeing to review a paper (usually 3 days). (otherwise I won’t review it).
   And, I review a lot – more than 200 papers.
   One thing I notice is that sometimes after I send in a verdict of rejection – a clear case of rejection – the paper is rejected on the basis of my report alone. That is, editors do not wait for a second report. This might be because I give a pointed account of why the paper should be rejected. My reports are generally not longer than a page and a half, often only a page long. But they say it like it is. And I write, in the first instance, to the editor (not the author). I hope my feedback is useful to authors, but I know it useful to the editors. And that to me is what I am asked to do.

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2. Anonymous

   April 17, 2026

   In my experience, there is no correlation.

   I’ve had papers accepted or conditionally accepted in the range of 4-12 months, rejected in the range of 2 weeks (desk reject!) to 12 months, and R&Rs that came in after 1 year (18 months was the winner).

   From the reviewer side, I tend to take just as long on positive and negative reviews. The editorial nastygram reminding me that the review is late does not influence my perception of the paper. Neither the paper nor its author has anything to do with the workload or family commitments that might prevent me from completing tasks on time.

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3. Juan

   April 17, 2026

   Yeah, like others have said, there’s no correlation. My experience coheres with others: short/long times for both types of outcomes (good/bad)…mostly medium/long for any of them.

   More tellingly, to the extent that there is data about this, it supports the opposing correlation (longer times, better outcomes). For example, Ethics publishes its data, and the longer a decision takes, the more likely it is to be a good outcome: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/698763
   I suspect you’d get similar results if you analyzed the data the APA collects for journals (https://apasurvey.philx.org/), but that’s sketchier since it’s completely up to reporters, and I’d expect bias one way or another (not sure which way).

   This makes sense: in most cases, if it takes really long, it means (in order of likelyhood): (1) that the paper has been judged good enough to send to referees; (2) that the initial referees didn’t judge it an obvious non-starter (especially for journals like Nous that sometimes request/allow an initial assessment without comments); and (3) that if one report was received, it wasn’t so negative as to rule out the paper (cf. Ergo’s explicit policy).

   So: I definitely recommend generally NOT pulling a paper after a long time both for prudential reasons and for the effect in the system. There’s a good chance you may be pulling out from a process where already there is a positive report, and, as a result, it’d be a waste of the reviewer’s time.

   There are exceptions of course (e.g., if you’re invited to contribute to a collection for which the piece is perfect). One significant one is if the journal is completely unresponsive, as that might indicate there’s a problem such that the piece may not even have gone out to reviewers (as happened to me in the longest process yet; though thankfully the end result for that piece was positive, once the journal realized the problem. So I’d give it some time even in those cases, and try different ways to contact the journal). [Unresponsive means: you don’t hear for several weeks after you write to check on your piece after it has been 4 months or so since submission].

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