What Happens After You Submit Your Paper to a Journal

Before your paper reaches any external reviewers, it goes through what's called a desk review or initial screening.

The handling editor (sometimes called the associate editor) does a quick assessment. They're asking three main questions:

Does this fit our journal's scope? If you submitted a computer science paper to a biology journal, it's getting rejected here. This sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised how often it happens.

Is the quality high enough for peer review? They're looking for basic things like proper methodology, clear writing, and sufficient novelty. If your methods section is two sentences long, that's a red flag.

Is this potentially interesting to our readers? Even if it's technically sound, if it's too niche or incremental, some journals will desk reject it.

Desk rejection rates vary enormously: Nature desk-rejects ~70%, Nature Communications ~90%, and PNAS ~54%. Even PLOS ONE, which uses a soundness-only review model, desk-rejects ~31%. The editor will send you a brief email explaining why. These rejections usually happen within 1-4 weeks.

If you get a desk rejection, don't take it personally. Often it's just a mismatch between your paper and the journal. Check out our guide on common desk rejection reasons to understand what went wrong.

If your paper passes the desk review, the real work begins. The editor needs to find 2-4 external reviewers who can evaluate your work.

This is harder than it sounds.

The editor starts with a list of potential reviewers. They might use:

• Authors you cited in your references
• People who've published similar work recently
• Members of the journal's editorial board
• Recommendations from their network

But here's the catch: most people they ask will say no.

Reviewers are unpaid volunteers. They're busy with their own research, teaching, and life. The good reviewers - the ones you actually want reading your paper - are constantly being asked to review. They might already be handling 5-10 reviews this year.

The editor sends out invitations. "Would you be willing to review this manuscript on X topic? The deadline would be Y date."

Maybe 1 in 3 people will say yes. Sometimes it's worse.

This is why the reviewer assignment phase can take weeks. The editor isn't being slow - they're just struggling to find qualified people who'll actually do the work.

Pro tip: When you submit your paper, you can usually suggest reviewers. Do this. Suggest 4-6 people who know your field but aren't your direct collaborators. Make the editor's job easier.

Once the editor finds reviewers, they send out your manuscript with a deadline. Usually 3-4 weeks for the initial review.

But reviewers are human. They get busy, travel, forget. Most journals expect about half their reviewers to miss the first deadline.

The editor sends reminder emails. Sometimes they have to find replacement reviewers if someone goes completely silent.

Here's what reviewers are actually doing during this time:

Reading your paper thoroughly. Good reviewers read it 2-3 times. Once for general understanding, once to take detailed notes, once to write their review.

Checking your methods. They're asking: Did you do this experiment correctly? Are the controls appropriate? Can I reproduce this from your description?

Evaluating your claims. Do your results actually support your conclusions? Are you overselling your findings?

Assessing significance. Is this work important enough for this journal? Does it advance the field meaningfully?

A thorough review can take 8-20 hours of work. Good reviewers take this seriously.

Meanwhile, you're checking the submission portal obsessively. The status might change from "Under Review" to "Reviews Being Processed" or something similar. This usually means reviews are coming in.

The editor collects all the reviews and makes a decision. The main options are:

Accept (rare). Your paper is basically perfect as-is. This happens to maybe 5-15% of submissions, and usually only for really strong work or perfectly executed studies.

Minor revision. The reviewers found some issues, but nothing major. You might need to clarify methods, add a control experiment, or fix some figures. Timeline: 2-4 weeks to revise.

Major revision. Significant concerns that require substantial additional work. Maybe you need new experiments, different statistical analyses, or major rewriting. Timeline: 2-6 months to revise.

Reject. Either the reviewers found fundamental flaws, or the work isn't suitable for the journal. Sometimes the editor will suggest alternative journals.

The decision email includes the reviewer comments. These can range from helpful and constructive to... less so.

Don't panic if the reviews seem harsh. Most papers get major revision on the first round. It's normal.

If you get revisions, you now have real work to do.

Read all the comments carefully. Don't just skim. Print them out, highlight key points, make notes.

Address every single comment. Even if you disagree, you need to explain why. Reviewers notice when you ignore their feedback.

Write a detailed response letter. Go point-by-point through each reviewer's comments. Quote their original comment, then explain what you changed or why you didn't change it.

Be respectful but confident. You don't have to accept every suggestion, but you need to justify your decisions with data or logic.

Most revised papers get accepted, especially if you've addressed the concerns thoughtfully. But some go through multiple rounds of revision.

For detailed guidance on this process, check out our guides on responding to reviewer comments and major vs minor revision strategies.

Your paper was accepted. But you're not done yet.

Copyediting. The journal's staff will edit your paper for grammar, style, and formatting. They might ask clarifying questions about unclear sentences.

Proofs. You'll get a PDF of how your paper will look in print. Check everything carefully - figure placement, author names, affiliations. This is your last chance to catch errors.

Publication. First online, then in print (if the journal still does print). Online publication usually happens 2-8 weeks after acceptance.

Some journals have "fast track" options for urgent or high-impact work - Lancet is known for particularly fast decisions on urgent medical research - but most follow this standard timeline.

Submission systems are vague on purpose. Still, most labels map to a fairly predictable stage:

What strong labs do while a paper is out:

• keep a short list of likely revision experiments or analyses
• track parallel target journals in case the paper comes back rejected
• clean data, code, and figure files so revision turnaround is faster
• avoid mentally "publishing" the paper before the decision arrives

Don't argue with editors about desk rejections. They're rarely overturned, and you'll just waste time.

Don't blame reviewers for being slow. The editor is managing the timeline, not the reviewers.

Don't submit the same paper to multiple journals at once. Wait for a decision before trying elsewhere.

Don't take harsh reviews personally. Focus on the scientific content, not the tone.

This process is frustrating. It's slow, unpredictable, and sometimes unfair. Good papers get rejected. Mediocre papers sometimes get accepted at top journals.

But it's also the best quality control system we have in science. Those reviewer comments, even the annoying ones, usually make your paper better.

Typical timeline from submission to publication: 6-18 months. Yes, really. Plan accordingly.

The wait times vary enormously between fields and journals. Check our review timelines database to see average times for specific journals.

If this is your first submission, expect it to take longer than you think. First papers often need more revision rounds because you're still learning the unwritten rules of scientific writing.

Most papers don't get accepted on the first try. That's normal. Even experienced researchers face rejections regularly.

The key is persistence and learning from feedback. Each revision, each rejection, each reviewer comment teaches you something about how to communicate your science better.

General guides say "2-6 months." Here's what actually happens at specific journals based on SciRev aggregate data and journal-reported metrics:

The fastest desk decisions come from JAMA (~2 days) and Cell (1-7 days). The slowest come from Science Advances (~31 days), where working-scientist editors juggle their own research alongside triage.

For journal-specific timing, check our review timelines database.