Decisions and Reviews Statistics for 2024

Just like we did last year and a year before that, we are now presenting several key statistics that reflect the past year (i.e., 2024). We will take a look at our submissions, the time it takes to receive a decision, and the reviews, as well as trends across several past years.

Please note, that while all submissions from 2024 passed the internal evaluation phase (i.e., the part where editor decided to desk reject the manuscript or send it to external reviewers), some manuscripts are still in the review process (being revised by the authors, waiting for reviews to come), hence not all statistics for 2024 submissions are final. 

Submission and Decision Statistics: 2024

In 2024, we received 501 submissions—a 15 percent increase from the previous year. After submission, the assigned editor decides whether the manuscript meets our journal’s basic quality standards and whether it will be sent to external reviewers or directly rejected. The desk reject rate in 2024 was the same as in 2023 (81%). Because we had more submissions and the desk reject rate remained the same, we ultimately sent more submissions to external reviewers (see Figure 1). 

Figure 1. Submissions and Initial Decisions in 2020-2024.

One third of the 93 (n = 31) submissions sent to external reviewers in 2024 are still being reviewed or revised, pending a final decision. To gain a more informative overview of how manuscripts typically go through the review process in our journal, we thus look at the last five years (2020-2024) combined.

Figure 2. Decisions for Articles Submitted in 2020-2024 in Each Review Round.

Figure 2 depicts the decision flow for the submitted articles. We would like to emphasize a few aspects. First, not surprisingly, most rejections happen in the initial phase based on the assigned editor’s evaluation. Second, about 44% of manuscripts that go to external reviewers are rejected, most often when we receive the first reviews. Thus, the chances of getting published when the authors are invited to revise the manuscript are generally quite high. Third, the majority of published articles go through several rounds of revisions. They are most frequently accepted after two revisions, but we also have those that need to be revised up to four times. Lastly, overall, around ten percent of submissions are eventually accepted. You may notice the figure says 9%, but we have 36 manuscripts still in various phases of the review process, most of which will likely be accepted in due time. The 9% in the figure thus underestimates the reality.

Decision Length

Just like in the last report, we focus on how long it takes to reach two key milestones.

The first one reflects the time from submission to the initial decision, i.e., to receiving a desk reject decision or deciding to send the manuscript to reviewers. On average, the initial evaluation in 2024 took 11 days (Me = 7), with 70% of decisions being made within ten days since submission. The average number of days decreased from the previous year, when it was around 18 days. We are happy that we managed to get the decisions done faster, but of course, we have also submissions that took substantially longer, typically due to various circumstances such as unexpected increase in workload of editors, vacations, etc.

The second milestone concerns only the submissions sent to reviewers and captures the time from submission to receiving the decision with reviews. As such, it usually covers the most demanding period in the review process, where we need to contact and secure a sufficient amount of quality reviews. From the 2024 submissions, 93 were sent to reviewers, and 88 of those received the first decision. For these manuscripts, this process took on average 167 days (Me = 146). This is very close to the final 2023 metric (M = 166, Me = 148). Since not all 2024 submissions reached this milestone yet, the 2024 average will, however, likely increase.

Please note we chose not to present the decision length from submission to the final reject/accept decision because this period is influenced by the number of review rounds, making it less informative.

Reviewer Statistics

To make a decision, we require at least two quality reviews per article. As mentioned above, this process is quite time-consuming. Hopefully, the following statistics will illuminate some of the reasons for the length of the review process. 

In 2024, we had to send (so far) 2,415 requests for reviews in the first review round. This translates into 26 review requests per article—a figure similar to 2023, but as shown in , much higher than what it was just a few years back. Similar to the number of decision length, the number of requests will likely still grow for 2024 since not all submissions have enough quality reviews yet.

Figure 3. The Total and Average Number of Review Requests for Articles (2020-2024).

Upon receiving our invitation, the reviewers have the option to accept it or decline it. Out of the 2,415 review requests in 2024, more than half (57%) of reviewers ignored the request and did not respond in any way. Another 32% declined the invitation, totalling 89% of review requests that are without a positive response. These numbers are very similar to 2023 (87% of requests without a positive response), but again higher than they were in 2020 (75%) and 2021 (74%).

We also encounter reviewers who accept the invitation but never deliver a review. In 2023, this was 7% of those who accepted the invitation. In 2024, the number is 14%, but it will likely decrease since some of the promised reviews may still be delivered.

In addition to the reviews that are never delivered, some reviews that we receive are of poor quality and are not sent to the authors. In 2024, the editors rated about 13% of received reviews as having poor quality (1 or 2 points out of 5 points maximum for review evaluation). This number is a bit lower than in 2023 (15%), and we also had a higher number of reviews rated with five stars (2024: 47%, 2023: 38%), so hopefully, this positive trend will continue.

The poorly rated reviews typically do not provide constructive criticism, are rather short and vague, and are often too generic to be helpful. In 2024, we also started to receive some reviews generated by AI. Luckily, this does not seem to happen frequently; however, we would like to express our disapproval with such a practice (which is also included in our guidelines for reviewers). We do not wish to send these reviews to the authors either, and while we try, they could probably slip under the editors’ radar at times. We thus encourage authors to contact us whenever they suspect the reviews were generated by AI. 

Concluding Remarks

As is apparent, the year 2024 was very similar to the previous year in many aspects. We can already tell that we will see more changes in next year’s report (for 2025), as we are currently experiencing a 50% increase in the number of submissions.

Our goal is always to ensure a quality review process and publish robust research that enriches our field. We are grateful to all who help us in achieving this goal. We would thus like to thank the reviewers and editors who contribute their time and expertise to assess manuscripts and offer valuable feedback, as well as the authors for trusting us with their work and working thoroughly on improving it during the review process.

Lenka Dedkova, Marie Jaron Bedrosova, and Vojtech Mylek