Researchers Left in the Dark

Many readers of The Nuzzo Letter have probably heard of academic peer review, but few are likely to have ever participated in the process or have viewed it from the inside. Here, my aim is to show readers what a journal’s submission portal looks like and explain how authors are often left in the dark regarding the status of their paper submissions.

Below, I have posted a screenshot of a submission portal for a journal where I currently have a paper under review. The journal is associated with one of the major academic publishers. The title of my paper, which can be seen in the screenshot, is “Sex Differences in Sit-and-Reach Flexibility in Children and Adolescents: A Meta-Analysis.” I have made a pre-print of this paper available at SportRxiv, and I have written a blog about the results at The Nuzzo Letter. (It is one of the papers associated with my GoFundMe drive for research on childhood sex differences in physical performance.)

Not all publishers or journals use the same software for their submission portals. Nevertheless, many of the indicators in the portals are similar across journals, and these indicators give authors imprecise information about the status of their paper.

In the screenshot below, one can see the title of my paper and the identification number that the journal has assigned to it. Likely “25” in the identification number represents the year 2025, and “00200” in the identification number likely indicates that my paper was the 200th paper submitted to the journal in 2025. We can also see that the initial date that I submitted the paper to the journal was March 4, 2025. Thus, my paper has been under review at the journal for over 10 months! Importantly, the 10-month wait is only for the initial round of reviews. Because papers often undergo two or three rounds of reviews, and each round takes a few months, the final version of this paper is a long way away from appearing on the internet.

In the screenshot, one can also see columns labelled “status date” and “current status.” The “current status” of my paper is labelled as “under review.” Yet, my paper has had this status designation for many months, and I have no idea how far along the paper is in the review process. The label “under review” could mean four things:

1. The paper is still with the editor and has yet to be sent out for review.

2. The editor has decided that the paper is suitable for review at the journal and is now searching for other academics to review the paper.

3. Reviewers have been identified by the editor, and the reviewers are currently reading and evaluating the paper.

4. The reviewers have returned their comments to the editor, but those comments are sitting unread in the editor’s inbox.

The “status date” of September 7, 2025, suggests that some action occurred on the paper on that date, but I have no idea what action that was, and I have no idea why no further action has occurred on the paper in the past five months. Was September 7th, the date that the editor started contacting potential reviewers? Was it the date that one of the reviewers decided to review the paper? Was it the date that Reviewer 1 returned their comments to the editor? Was it the date that Reviewer 2 returned their comments to the editor?

My colleagues and I have submitted dozens of papers to dozens of different journals over the years, and I can attest that many of us operate in a state of confusion and uncertainty regarding the status of our papers. Consequently, we often end up sending semi-regular emails to editorial offices, requesting status updates. We often receive copied and pasted replies, which are largely uninformative. The responses that we receive are often along the lines of: “As you know, peer review is a voluntary system, and sometimes, it can take time to identify willing reviewers.”

Many of the email replies that we receive from editorial offices also give off a tone that suggests no one in the editorial office is particularly concerned about h