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What is the status of my submission?

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Editorial Director
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Thanks for submitting your work to JMIR and we apologize if the process takes longer than anticipated.

As a matter of principle, we do not respond to email queries like "What is the status of my submission" because authors can track the status of their submission on their author homepage. If it says "in review" then we ask authors to patiently wait for our decision, and refrain from sending us emails asking for the status, which is not helpful and only takes away from the editors' time, and certainly will not speed up the decision making process or increase chances for acceptance. The publisher or editor cannot give you interim updates before we have a sufficient number of reviews.

We are trying to publish in a timely manner and faster than other journals. At JMIR we strive for a quick turn-around time, with a target median decision time of 2 months (submission to initial decision), see What is your turnaround time?.

However, that median means that about half of all manuscripts take longer to assess, and many factors (most often manuscript quality and disagreements between reviewers, quality of reviewers suggested by the authors, journal it was submitted to) influence the actual decision time. 

Please contact us only if you have not received a decision after 5 months.

We recognize that many authors require a rapid decision because they need to cite initial results or formative research (e.g. submitted to JMIR Formative Res) to cite them in grant proposals. In these cases we highly recommend to make the submission available as Preprint, which can be cited immediately after submission (see What are JMIR Preprints? and How do I change my preprint settings or availability of preprints?). Many funding agencies now allow and encourage citation of a Preprint. 

If authors wish to speed up the decision-making process e.g. require a decision by a certain deadline, we recommend to fast-track (expedite) the paper, in which case we guarantee an initial decision within 4 weeks (20 business days).

Status messages:

  • Incomplete: The manuscript has not been submitted yet, either because not all submission steps have been completed, or because the submission fee (if any) has not been paid yet (note that as of July 2019, none of JMIR Publication's journals charges a submission fee). Note that after paying the submission fee you may have to go back to the submission form to complete the submission. See Editing, Finalizing or Deleting Incomplete Submissions
  • Unassigned: Currently awaiting assignment to an editor
  • In review: Under internal or external peer-review
  • External Reviews Completed, Waiting for Editorial Decision: Some external reviews are in, please wait patiently for the editor to make a decision
  • Awaiting author revision - see Editor/Author Email log: a decision has been made and we are waiting for a revision / response to reviewer comments from the author (follow the instructions at  As author, how do I respond to reviewer comments and upload a revised manuscript?). If you did not receive an email with editorial/peer-review comments, please check your spam filter, or review the Editor/Author correspondence (click on the status link and find the link "Editor/Author Email Record" at the bottom of the review tab, see also I am an author - where can I find the past reviewer comments?)
  • In editing: manuscript has been accepted and is currently in copyediting, typesetting or proofreading. Click on the link and check the Editing tab to see if we are awaiting a response from authors, either in the context of copyediting (step 2) or proofreading (approving final galleys)

 

Note: Published or rejected papers are moved from the Active to the Archive tab. If you still don't see your manuscript, see I can't find my submitted manuscript?

 

 

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