Major Revision at ACS Nano: What It Means, Next Steps

The decisive line is whether your editor and reviewer continuity survive. A major revision preserves both, which is why it is materially stronger than a decline, which closes the file.

ACS Nano does not report an acceptance-after-major-revision rate, so any precise ACS Nano-specific number you encounter is fabricated. The defensible framing rests on two points: ACS publishes no acceptance rate, unofficial estimates put ACS Nano at roughly 20 to 25 percent of submissions, and a manuscript at major revision has already passed the Associate Editor screen and a round of external review.

• Reaching a major revision means you cleared the desk filter (unofficial estimates put desk declines around 50 to 60 percent, with immediate rejections averaging about 4 days per SciRev).

• Editorial commitment is real but conditional: the handling Associate Editor retains discretion to reject after re-review if the revision does not resolve the reviewers' concerns.

• The general cross-journal figure that 60 to 80 percent of major revisions are eventually accepted is a useful prior, but ACS Nano is more selective than the journals that range describes, and the nanoscience-priority bar that drove the original concern is re-tested on resubmission.

Spend your energy resolving every editor-flagged concern in the response to reviewers rather than estimating a percentage ACS Nano does not publish.

The ACS Nano decision letter specifies your deadline, and in our experience a major revision often takes 6 to 12 weeks per round depending on how much new experimental work the reviewers requested. ACS Nano's guidelines do not publish a standard revision window, so the date in your letter is the one that governs. If you may miss it, contact the editorial office before it passes.

If the experiments will not fit the deadline, contact the editorial office through the ACS Publishing Center with your manuscript ID before the deadline. Extensions are at the editor's discretion; the avoidable failure is going silent and resurfacing after the window has closed.

Hold the revised manuscript within ACS Nano length norms while you add the requested work: ACS Nano does not publish a hard word cap on Articles, but it values concise presentation, and the guidelines call for an abstract of 250 words and an unheaded introduction generally of 1,000 words or fewer. In our experience many full Articles run roughly 6,000 to 10,000 words of main text.

If a major revision balloons the main text, move new characterization into the Supporting Information rather than the body.

Confirm open-access economics too, because ACS Nano is a hybrid journal where the default subscription route carries no author fee but the gold open-access article publishing charge is $4,500 (CC BY) or $4,000 (CC BY-NC-ND) at standard hybrid pricing before discounts (reduced to $2,000 or $1,500 under some ACS agreements, such as the CARLI consortium, or covered entirely under an ACS read-and-publish agreement), so a funder conversation belongs in the revision window rather than after a positive decision.

When major changes were requested, a revised ACS Nano manuscript can go back to the original reviewers (the guidelines say reviewers may be asked to review subsequent versions, especially if new data have been added). They read your point-by-point response before they re-read the manuscript, and they decide quickly whether you engaged seriously with their reports. ACS Nano reviewers evaluate originality, technical quality, clarity of presentation, and importance to the field, which in practice includes nanoscience significance, experimental validation, characterization-data adequacy, and reproducibility; on re-review they check whether the specific concerns they raised are now resolved in the manuscript and Supporting Information themselves.

In practice a revision comprises the revised manuscript, a cover letter, and a separate point-by-point response to the reviewers' comments, all through the ACS Publishing Center; ACS Nano's author checklist also asks for a marked copy as Supplemental Material for Review and a clean final copy without tracked changes. The response is what the reviewers read first.

1. Split the cover letter from the rebuttal. Use the cover letter only to summarize how the nanomaterial work changed at a high level; carry the detailed engagement with each comment into the separate point-by-point response.

1. Cite the characterization that proves the fix. For every reviewer comment, restate it, describe the synthesis, imaging, or measurement you added, and point to the exact figure, TEM/SEM panel, scheme, or Supporting Information dataset where a reviewer can confirm it.

1. Re-anchor nanoscience significance where that was the concern. If a reviewer questioned priority rather than data, the revision must move the broad nanoscience principle into the title, abstract, and first figure, not just add more samples.

1. Close characterization and validation gaps in the Supporting Information. Add TEM/SEM particle-size distributions, XRD indexing, XPS chemical-state confirmation, stability and toxicity controls, and experimental validation for any computational or device claim a reviewer flagged.

1. Disagree honestly and within the editor's roadmap. A major revision means the Associate Editor saw a path to acceptance, so you can push back on a reviewer request the editor did not specifically endorse, with literature support and courtesy, never on a point the editor flagged.

Route your revised manuscript through an ACS Nano point-by-point response check so the nanoscience-significance framing and characterization completeness are verified against the reviewers' concerns before you resubmit.

• Do not leave the nanoscience-priority claim in the cover letter while only adding samples or yield. Reviewers re-check the framing.

• Do not skimp on the Supporting Information. Incomplete TEM/SEM size distributions, missing XRD indexing, weak XPS chemical-state data, or absent stability and toxicity controls are named reviewer focuses on re-review.

• Do not leave a computational or device claim without experimental validation. Computational nanostructure work without experimental validation is a named desk-rejection trigger at ACS Nano.

• Do not meet a characterization request with a combative rebuttal instead of the measurement. A reviewer who re-reads pushback where a TEM panel or control was expected reads the file more skeptically, not less.

• Do not promise changes the manuscript does not contain. Reviewers verify the file.

• Do not miss the deadline in the letter without contact; ACS Nano's guidelines do not say what happens if you do, so ask the editorial office before it passes.

Across ACS Nano manuscripts, three patterns most often turn a possible acceptance into a major revision, and the same three most often decide whether the revision then survives a reviewer re-review. These are anonymized observations from Manusights pre-submission and revision review, not access to ACS editorial records. Each is a named failure pattern tied to a specific ACS Nano editorial expectation, and in practice we see them recur across the manuscripts we screen.

The useful question for a revising author is whether the revised abstract, first figure, Supporting Information characterization, and response to reviewers already answer the concern in the manuscript itself.

Nanoscience significance stranded in the cover letter while the data read as applied materials on the page.

In ACS Nano manuscripts, the most common reason for a major revision is not a flawed synthesis but a broad-nanoscience-significance claim that lives in the cover letter rather than the title, abstract, and first figure. The desk screen, which unofficial estimates put at declining 50 to 60 percent of submissions, is a priority filter that often routes rigorous-but-applied work toward ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces or ACS Applied Nano Materials, so reviewers grant a major revision to force the framing to match the evidence.

The strongest revisions rewrite the abstract and first figure so a nanoscientist outside the immediate subfield can name the principle the work advances, then carry that claim through the introduction and discussion. A revision that adds more materials or more device performance without re-anchoring the nanoscience priority leaves the same reviewer concern in place on re-review.

Characterization-data gaps in the Supporting Information that re-review tests directly. In ACS Nano manuscripts, reviewers frequently grant a major revision while flagging incomplete characterization: missing TEM or SEM particle-size distributions, absent XRD pattern indexing, weak XPS chemical-state confirmation, no stability or toxicity controls, or thin reproducibility evidence across batches. The decision reads as a major revision because the nanoscience is promising, but the path to acceptance runs through the Supporting Information.

The strongest revisions close every flagged item with an exact Supporting Information location in the response to reviewers, so the re-reviewing referee can verify the structure or device behavior without reconstructing it from raw data.

Computational or device claims that outrun the experimental validation. In ACS Nano manuscripts, a paper sometimes earns a major revision because a simulation, predicted nanostructure, or device-performance claim is written as if it were established without experimental confirmation. Computational nanostructure work without experimental validation is a named ACS Nano desk-rejection trigger, and reviewers become severe where the language outruns the measurement.

The strongest revisions add the experimental validation the reviewers asked for, connect the simulation output to synthesis, characterization, measured device behavior, or biological response, or state clearly that a result is a prediction rather than a demonstration. Because ACS Nano is a nanoscience journal, this experimental-validation test, not a biomedical reporting checklist, is where re-review is won or lost.

This page tells you what ACS Nano Associate Editors and reviewers look for when they re-read a revised manuscript. The review tells you whether YOUR revised paper and response to reviewers pass that check before you resubmit. Use this page when you have just received a major revision at ACS Nano and need to decide what to fix first, given that the handling Associate Editor owns the re-review.

We have reviewed manuscripts targeting ACS Nano and peer ACS nanoscience venues in pre-submission and revision contexts; the named patterns above are the same ones reviewers flag on re-review. 60-day money-back guarantee. Your manuscript is not used for model training, and access is limited to the review workflow.

Of the manuscripts our team reviewed for this ACS Nano decision-outcome pattern sample, the strongest predictor of a clean reviewer re-review was whether the resubmission closed every editor-flagged characterization and experimental-validation concern with an exact, already-present Supporting Information or manuscript location, rather than arguing the nanoscience significance in the cover letter without re-anchoring it in the abstract and first figure.

Check whether your ACS Nano revision is re-review ready

If an ACS Nano revision is rejected after re-review, the cascade depends on what the reviewers and Associate Editor cited.

ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces is the natural ACS cascade for applied nanomaterials papers where the ACS Nano nanoscience priority bar is not met but the applied utility is high; ACS supports manuscript transfer with reviewer reports preserved.

ACS Applied Nano Materials is the ACS cascade for nanomaterials specialty work, and Nano Letters is the ACS cascade for shorter-format nanoscience.

JACS is the broader ACS chemistry flagship, and Nature Nanotechnology, Advanced Materials, and Small are external Springer Nature and Wiley cascades; reports do not transfer, but a documented ACS Nano revision strengthens a fresh submission.

This page was created from:

• ACS public ACS Nano author guidelines at ACS author guidance

• ACS's publishing-process page and ACS Nano's author guidelines and checklist (the editorial staging, the marked-copy and clean-copy revision files, the decision categories including "reject but consider a resubmission", and the Article length guidance), with the 4-day average for immediate rejections coming from SciRev and the 50-to-60-percent desk-decline and computational-nanostructure desk-rejection patterns being unofficial estimates and Manusights observations

• SciRev community-reported transit data on ACS Nano

• the broader peer-review literature on major-revision handling and response-letter structure

• Manusights pre-submission and revision review experience with ACS Nano-targeted manuscripts.

Source limitations: ACS publishes the editorial staging and the decision categories, but it does not publish a journal-specific acceptance-after-major-revision rate, a desk-decline rate, or a standard revision window. Any precise ACS Nano-specific revision-acceptance percentage is therefore not verifiable; the 60 to 80 percent figure above is a general cross-journal range, not an ACS Nano number, and ACS Nano is more selective than the journals that range describes.

The named revision patterns are Manusights interpretation from pre-submission and revision review, not private ACS records.