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Delayed decision on “minor revisions” that was an unofficial acceptance?

In our new “how can we help you?” thread, a reader asks:

I recently had a “minor revisions” verdict from a journal that was actually an unofficial acceptance and an instruction to de-anonymize the manuscript and to to the final formatting in line with the journal’s house style (etc.). They explicitly said that the peer review process had finished and that I needed to do the final formatting before they can accept it.

Now, though, I’ve been waiting to hear back from them for several weeks. I know that’s normal for an actual revision, but does anyone have a sense of how long this can take for a fake revision that was effectively an acceptance? This is the first time I’ve had to do all the final proofing steps with the acceptance hanging over my head—indeed, I’ve published with this same journal in the past and they didn’t do this! Is this the new norm? Time is of the essence for me in terms of being able to report that it is accepted and uploading a pre-print and all of that, so I’m wondering if there’s a point at which (2 months? 4 months?) I should just treat the damn thing as having been accepted. Is there any chance that they could reject it at this point?

I’m not sure. Do any readers have helpful insights to share?

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11 responses to “Delayed decision on “minor revisions” that was an unofficial acceptance?”

  1. Anonymous

    If it’s time sensitive, I think you can absolutely (politely) reach out to the editor explaining what you said here and asking for clarification.

    Reply
  2. Mike Titelbaum

    There’s a million possible reasons for the delay—editor could be on vacation, or maybe final acceptance requires extra administrative steps, or maybe they already gave it to the production department to lay out and the next thing you’ll see is a proof. Who knows? Writing to the journal is fine after a reasonable time period (depending on the journal’s stats). But if you’re going to rush things, be sure to give a legitimate reason why it’s time sensitive for you. (If the reason is that you’re going on the market in the fall, you don’t need a verdict in June.)

    Reply
  3. Anonymous

    Isn’t this just an acceptance? If they already asked you to de-anonymize, there doesn’t seem to be a realistic chance they’ll reject it now (unless you didn’t put any effort into the minor revisions–but I’m sure you did do so).

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      OP here: This is also what I was wondering/wanted to ask! Is this effectively an acceptance already?
      To clarify, there were no minor revisions that were requested apart from de-anonymizing, adding acknowledgments, and bringing the manuscript in line with the journal’s house style in terms of formatting. I did all of those things, of course! The two reviewers gave the explicit green light with no further comments, so there was nothing else to respond to.

      Reply
      1. Anonymous

        Same commenter as above here: I’m junior, so others might have different perspectives, but I had situations like this where I was advised by senior folks that I could already treat it as forthcoming for CV purposes.

      2. Anonymous

        This is helpful, thank you! Did you wait to post a pre-print until they got back to you?

      3. Anonymous

        No, I didn’t wait. I don’t fully know the etiquette, but I can’t really think of a reason not to post it once you’ve submitted a de-anonymized version.

  4. Anonymous

    Two comments. First, one reason NOT to post a pre-print now is that there may be restrictions in the publication agreement you have to sign with the journal. You should either ask the editor what are allowed to do, or wait until you have read and signed the publication agreement. Second, there are many reasons why your paper might be held up at this point in the process. I worked on a journal, and sometimes various processes happened in batches – the publisher, for example, would generate proofs for six papers together, in batch, rather than generate proofs for each single paper as they came in. So the authors of the first five papers would have to wait until a sixth paper was ready. So do not panic.

    Reply
  5. Anonymous

    FWIW I once had a paper accepted and moved “to production” and it was held up for nearly a month because the production team apparently was using the wrong email address to contact me (typo in the email address). This was only resolved because I reached out. Probably a rare occurrence but stuff like this can happen.

    Reply
  6. Anonymous

    Depending on what journal it is, I think I would contact them and politely ask for clarification/a status update, because it may be a miscommunication (in that they might think “this person knows the paper is officially accepted now” and not have bothered to communicate that to you since they thought it was implicit in their previous instructions, and some journals take forever to actually get stuff to the next stage).

    Reply
  7. Anonymous

    I won’t list it anywhere as “forthcoming”, even if it’s an unofficial acceptance. (I think this also applies for verdicts like “conditional acceptance”.)

    To be clear, I think it’s fine to list them as “minor revisions” and “conditional acceptance”, say on your CV (if you’re going on the market, etc.), assuming one is fine with doing those in the first place. But “forthcoming” to me requires an *official* acceptance.

    I think it makes sense for the OP to nudge them after a short period of time (that is, should not wait for the full 3-4 month period).

    Reply

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