Strange paper status change at the journal

[patric44]

Hello every one
I submitted a paper to the journal "Physica Scripta" 25 days ago, the status was "out for review" then changed to "1st reviewer agreed to report" and after 15 days instead of "1st reviewer reports received", it changed to "out for review" again?!, can any one explain what could be the problem here

 

[Vanadium 50]

Based on your posting here and your attempt to send substantially similar papers to two different journals, it is possible that you got caught at it.

This can happen when both journals send the papers to the same referee (who is presumably an expert, so this is not unlikely) and he responds "What the heck?"

 

[patric44]

Based on your posting here and your attempt to send substantially similar papers to two different journals, it is possible that you got caught at it.

This can happen when both journals send the papers to the same referee (who is presumably an expert, so this is not unlikely) and he responds "What the heck?"

Please don't through accusations who said the two papers are substantially similar! you never saw them, plus I never send it. Now to my main question, can the reviewer decline the invitation after accepting it, is that common in the literature

 

[Frabjous]

There are plenty of reasons that a review can go sideways without it necessarily reflecting on the quality of the paper.

 

[Vanadium 50]

If you want to know, call the editor.

If you don't want people to guess, don't ask us to guess. Lordy.

If you check the journal's home page they say 52 days is the median submission to decision after review. Fretting after 25 days makes no sense.

 

[Choppy]

There are too many things that could be going on behind the scenes, and as said, they may or may not have anything to do with the paper. Consider...

• Referee 1 and Referee 2 disagree substantially. When this happens, often the paper will go out to a mediating Referee 3.
• A referee agrees to do a review and then, on reading the work in detail, realizes there is a conflict of interest and bows out of the process.
• A referee could have agreed to do the review, and then on reading the paper in detail, realized it was out of their field of expertise and then reported to the journal as much.
• Sometimes referees can agree to do the review and then just not report back. It's a volunteer process. Sometimes life happens.
• The associate editor may not have felt one of the reviews was appropriate and so they sent it back out.
• The wrong paper could have been sent out for review.

Until the paper comes back, you really can't speculate. It's in the box and both dead and alive at once. It's best to spend your time working on the next paper.