Major Revision at Energy: 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 screening desk reject that never reached reviewers or a post-review reject that sends the paper to a sister title at a different bar.

Energy does not report an acceptance-after-major-revision rate, so any precise Energy-specific number you encounter is fabricated. The defensible framing rests on two verifiable facts: Energy declines roughly 50 to 60 percent of submissions at editorial screening, and a manuscript at major revision has already passed that screen and a round of external review.

• Reaching a major revision means you cleared the screen that declines component-level work lacking system value before review.
• Editorial commitment is real but conditional: the handling editor retains discretion to reject after re-review if the revision does not resolve the system-value, techno-economic, or deployment concerns.
• The general cross-journal figure that 60 to 80 percent of major revisions are eventually accepted is a useful prior, but Energy applies system-level, economic, and deployment tests that the original decision flagged and that are re-tested directly on resubmission.

Spend your energy resolving every editor-flagged system-value and techno-economic concern in the response rather than estimating a percentage Energy does not publish.

The Energy decision letter specifies your deadline in Editorial Manager; Elsevier sets the revision window in the letter rather than publishing a single fixed figure, and major-revision rounds typically add 6 to 12 weeks. The date in your letter is the one that governs, and missing it without contact can stall the file or convert the revision into a fresh submission.

If the analysis will not fit the deadline, contact the editorial office through Editorial Manager at editorialmanager.com/egy with your manuscript ID before the date; egy@elsevier.com handles editorial-office inquiries. Editors routinely grant reasonable extensions when reviewers asked for added sensitivity analysis or deployment validation; the avoidable failure is going silent and resurfacing after the window has closed.

Hold the revised manuscript readable while you add the requested work: keep highlights and the graphical abstract pointed at the system-level decision rather than the method alone, because Elsevier triage depends on them. Confirm open-access economics too, because Energy is a hybrid journal where the default subscription route carries no author fee but the gold open-access article publishing charge is about $4,050 on acceptance (often reduced by an institutional 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 Energy manuscript normally returns to the original reviewers. They read your point-by-point response before they re-read the manuscript, and they decide quickly whether you engaged seriously with their reports. Energy reviewers evaluate system-level innovation, techno-economic viability, deployment feasibility, and reproducibility; on re-review they check whether the specific concerns they raised are now resolved in the manuscript and supplementary files themselves.

Energy asks for the revised manuscript, a cover letter, and a separate point-by-point response, all through Editorial Manager. The response is what the reviewers read first.

1. Summarize headline changes in the cover letter; carry the detail in the point-by-point response. Keep the letter brief and reserve the comment-by-comment engagement for the separate response document.
2. Reproduce each comment, then answer it with a located change. Restate the reviewer's point, describe what you did, and cite the exact page, table, figure, or supplementary item that now reflects it.
3. Make the system boundary the spine of the revision. If a reviewer questioned generality, anchor the system boundary in Figure 1, align the benchmark to it, and state what changes at the system level if the finding holds.
4. Rebuild the techno-economic section honestly. Expose the cost inputs, sensitivity ranges, baseline comparisons, and operating-context assumptions so a reviewer can reproduce the economic claim rather than take it on faith.
5. Justify deployment feasibility and keep data reproducible. Replace ideal-condition assumptions with realistic constraints, document the methods, and deposit raw data and code so the systems analysis is verifiable.

Route your revised manuscript through an Energy point-by-point response check so the system-boundary clarity and techno-economic traceability are verified against the reviewers' concerns before you resubmit.

• Do not leave the first figure framing a component, material, or simulation result without a system-level energy consequence. Reviewers re-check whether the work behaves like a system study.
• Do not state techno-economic numbers that the methods, tables, or supplementary data cannot reproduce. Reviewers re-derive the cost claim.
• Do not let deployment feasibility rest on ideal operating conditions the supporting tables do not justify.
• Do not answer defensively. Reviewers re-reading a combative response look harder for reasons to reject.
• Do not promise analysis the manuscript does not contain. Reviewers verify the revised file against your response.
• Do not miss the Editorial Manager deadline without contacting the office first.

In our pre-submission review work with Energy 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 Elsevier editorial records. Each is a named failure pattern tied to a specific Energy 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 Figure 1, techno-economic section, supplementary files, and response to reviewers already answer the concern in the manuscript itself.

System boundary invisible in the first figures while the work behaves like a component study. In Energy manuscripts, the most common reason for a major revision is not weak methodology but a device, fuel, material, model, or conversion result presented without a clearly stated energy system in which the result matters. Because the editorial screen that declines 50 to 60 percent of submissions is a system-value filter, reviewers grant a major revision to force the systems consequence to the surface. The strongest revisions make the system boundary visible in Figure 1, align the benchmark with that boundary, and state plainly what changes at the system level if the finding is true, rather than adding more component-level performance numbers. A revision that deepens the component analysis without naming the system consequence leaves the same reviewer concern in place on re-review.

Techno-economic evidence too soft to reproduce on re-review. In Energy manuscripts, reviewers frequently grant a major revision when the paper names cost, scale, or efficiency but leaves the assumptions untraceable: no sensitivity analysis, no baseline comparison, no uncertainty range, or operating-cost inputs a reader cannot reconstruct. The decision reads as a major revision because the energy contribution is promising, but the path to acceptance runs through the techno-economic section. The strongest revisions expose the assumption table, the uncertainty bounds, and the practical operating context in the methods or supplementary files, and locate each in the response, so the re-reviewing referee can test the economic claim instead of asking for it a second time. Because Energy is a physical-science and engineering journal, this techno-economic-evidence test, not a biomedical reporting checklist, is where re-review is won or lost.

Deployment feasibility resting on ideal conditions the data do not justify. In Energy manuscripts, a paper sometimes earns a major revision because deployment feasibility is asserted under ideal operating, grid, building, or industrial conditions that the methods and supporting tables do not support. Reviewers become severe where the claimed real-world relevance outruns the evidence. The strongest revisions replace ideal-condition assumptions with realistic constraints, add the operating-envelope analysis or scaling consideration the reviewers asked for, and keep raw data and code available so another team can reproduce the systems result. A revision that repeats the ideal-condition framing without justifying it leaves the deployment concern open.

This page tells you what Energy handling 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 Energy and need to decide what to fix first, given that the handling editor owns the re-review. We have reviewed manuscripts targeting Energy and peer energy-systems 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. We do not train AI on your manuscript and delete it within 24 hours.

Of the 95 manuscripts our team reviewed for this Energy decision-outcome pattern sample, the strongest predictor of a clean reviewer re-review was whether the resubmission made the system boundary visible in Figure 1 and rebuilt the techno-economic section with traceable assumptions and an exact, already-present supplementary location, rather than deepening a component-level analysis without naming the system consequence.

Check whether your Energy revision is re-review ready

If an Energy revision is rejected after re-review, the cascade depends on what the reviewers and handling editor cited.

Applied Energy is the natural Elsevier cascade for energy-applications work where the general-energy system-level bar is not met but the applied relevance is high; Elsevier supports manuscript transfer with the file preserved. Applied Energy uses Editorial Manager at editorialmanager.com/apen; editorial contact apen@elsevier.com.

Energy Conversion and Management fits conversion-focused work, Journal of Energy Storage fits storage, and Renewable Energy fits renewable-energy studies.

Nature Energy and Joule (Cell Press) are external top-tier cascades; the file does not transfer, but a documented Energy revision strengthens a fresh submission.

This page was created from Elsevier's public Energy guide for authors at sciencedirect.com/journal/energy/publish/guide-for-authors, Elsevier Editorial Manager documentation (the editorial-screening model that declines roughly 50 to 60 percent of submissions on system-level innovation, techno-economic viability, and deployment feasibility; the point-by-point response requirement; the single-anonymized peer-review model; the hybrid open-access option), the broader peer-review literature on major-revision handling and response-letter structure, and Manusights pre-submission and revision review experience with Energy-targeted manuscripts. Source limitations: Elsevier publishes the editorial criteria and the response requirement, but it does not publish a journal-specific acceptance-after-major-revision rate. Any precise Energy-specific revision-acceptance percentage is therefore not verifiable; the 60 to 80 percent figure above is a general cross-journal range, not an Energy number. The named revision patterns are Manusights interpretation from pre-submission and revision review, not private Elsevier records.