Hi all.

I have an article under review with a pretty high journal in my subfield (humanities). The system says my article is with one individual, a Managing Editor, and is "awaiting reviewer assignment."

What I am trying to determine is 1. if my article is most likely past the desk rejection phase, and 2. Where my article will go next, if it isn't desk rejected.

I have Googled the journal's board, and been led to believe that the journal has five tiers of editors, in this order of hierarchy:
1. Senior Editor (1-2 people)
2. Editors (10-15 people)
3. Advisory Editors (15-20 people)
4. Associate Editor (1-3 people)
5. Managing Editor (1 singular person)

The individual my article is sitting with is the Managing Editor, though they are also in my article's topic area, so well-suited to review.

I know essentially nothing about journal editing, despite serving as a peer reviewer for a few, and because this journal is so high up in the field I am expecting a revise and resubmit at the very best.

Is it at all possible that my article is past a desk rejection phase? If it is, does anyone have any ideas about where it may go next? More specifically, if the system updates to say my article is with an Associate Editor or an Advisory Editor, should I assume I got past the first round, or should I assume the Managing Editor is not vetting my quality at all and is just doing some grunt work for the journal?

Thank you for your time - I know this is a rather stupid, anxious post, and that knowing the process in more depth will not change the outcome here, but I am applying for jobs and am worried I'll get a desk rejection before any possible interviews.

The IUCr posted a notice on 7 October about moving the journals to Wiley's Research Exchange platform, starting with Acta C, Acta E, IUCrData and IUCrJ. https://www.iucr.org/news/notices/announcement/iucr-wiley-publishing-partnership-announcement

I would like to hear how people in the community see it. I was in the Calgary Congress but I didn't hear anything about this, seem like a big move. Did anyone at the Congress hear this discussed beforehand? How much does the CIF and checkCIF workflow matter when you choose where to submit?

I’ve been doing academic research in biology for the past ~8 years and really liked but also struggled to make good figures. I sometimes look back at the first version of my figures and it’s quite a journey from there to the published version. Then I wonder how I got there.

So I’ve been compiling what the main steps are that move my figures toward a satisfactory version, which are also just general advice to make good, publication-ready figures.

1. One figure, one message

Just like a paragraph, a figure loses power when it tries to say too much at once. When deciding what to combine into panels, think about the figure legend you'll write, and how it will guide the reader through the story. If including multiple panels, they should reflect different elements of the same overall message. The order of your panels matters a lot: if panel A shows a pattern that raises a question, panel B can answer it, hence satisfying the reader's expectation.

1. Make color meaningful and consistent

We tend to want to make figures colorful (sometimes without real reason). Try to channel that urge. If a figure doesn't need color, it's completely fine to keep it in shades of grey. Otherwise, the reader will be distracted by thinking "what do these colors mean?". When you do use color, make sure it carries information: different colors for categories of a variable, or a gradient for a continuous one, in an intuitive direction (warmer = higher temperature, for instance). Also revise your color coding across the whole manuscript: if three colors represent your three treatment conditions in your first figure, keep those same three colors in every figure after that. Finally, it's good practice to pick a colorblind-friendly palette.

1. Layer information by combining color, shape, and size

Journal/thesis space is often limited, and you probably have more interesting results than room to show them. Keep your figure's main message pointed in one direction, but you can layer in extra information through point color, shape ("pch" in R, "marker" in Python), and size. For example: a scatterplot of your two key variables, colored by species, shaped by sex, and sized by body mass (yes, I’m biology biased). This gives you three extra dimensions of information while keeping the story in one clean plot.

1. Resize panels based on how much they need to say

If one of your plots is super simple to interpret, it may only need two tick marks (say, 0 and the max value) and bigger points. You can just shrink it. Doing so will free up space for the panels that are more complex and need more interpretive work. Also, varying panel sizes helps establish hierarchy. It guides the reader’s eye to your primary message and keeps the secondary details for the most interested readers.

1. Edit your figure outside of R or Python

If you love tweaking axis fonts and border thickness in code, or more generally, if you’re super comfortable with coding (which is more and more accessible with AI), you may disagree with this advice.

For me, a 100% coded approach tends to feel rigid for making and polishing figures. I like to build the core figure in my coding environment, then export it as a vector file (PDF or EPS) and finish the polish in design software (Illustrator, Affinity Designer, Inkscape, even PowerPoint!). Vector format also means infinite scalability: your figure looks equally sharp as a tiny panel or blown up on a poster. Editing "by hand" lets you adjust almost anything (except the data, of course): adjust element size and position, ensure consistent fonts across panels, and refine colors. You can even draw custom schematics or illustrations to convey complementary details.

And honestly, it is so relaxing to spend time fine-tuning your figure in Illustrator after a long day buried in r/Python code to generate it.

1. Find what's unnecessary, and cut it

You have a figure that’s correct and interpretable with some effort. Now ask yourself: what result do I actually want this to convey, and what’s standing in the way? Usually, you can easily spot elements to cut, such as:

• Unnecessary frames or heavy outer borders

• Redundant axes or labels

• Overcrowded tick marks

• Large empty spaces breaking up your panel flow etc.

Remove all of this! Let the essential message reach your reader’s eye as directly as possible.

I would love to hear your tips/advice from your own experience, or your main struggles when going from a raw to a publishable figure 😊

Hi everyone,

I need advice on how to follow up on progress with review of my paper.
We got back comments in July, did more experiments and addressed reviewers comments, resubmitted a little over a month ago, the status on the portal still shows ‘from Author’. It shows last activity was about a week ago, but no communication about what the status is. The journal is Science Advances.

I’m anxious about this, should I ask my PI to follow up with the editor, or should we just sit and wait. It’s been 5 weeks and it still shows ‘from author’

I’m anxious, please advise.

doi: //doi.org/10.1007/s40265-026-02368-0

link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40265-026-02368-0#citeas

Thank you very much!!!!

I tried everything but the line break after 75- will just not go away 😭 what can i do??

What if we paid as much attention to the questions students ask as to the answers they give?

In this study, Acar, Berthiaume, and Johnson examined questions generated by 165 undergraduate students during two divergent-thinking tasks.

Participants with higher originality and fluency scores were more likely to ask open-ended questions.

Questions exploring possibilities and thinking across time were also associated with creativity indicators, although those relationships varied across tasks.

For me, this offers a useful way to think about classroom questioning. Do our activities give students room to explore what might happen, consider alternatives, and pursue questions with several possible answers?

We could invite students to generate questions about a text, image, or problem before answering anything.

Then ask them to choose one that could open an interesting line of inquiry and explain why.

The study does not show that asking open-ended questions causes greater creativity. But it reminds us that students’ questions can reveal possibilities their answers alone may leave unseen.

Reference

Acar, S., Berthiaume, K., & Johnson, R. (2023). What kind of questions do creative people ask? Journal of Creativity, 33, Article 100062.

I came across a review paper on women's health in Cell by lead and corresponding authors that seem new to the field. The review appears to repackage existing theory only to tell us reproductive events matter and females should be studied - nothing that hasn't already been said before.

A quick look up of the corresponding author revealed equity in a company which sells a supplement now being tested in postmenopausal women. Cell Press policy requires relevant equity, company roles, and patents to be disclosed. Am I mistaken, or is this not relevant context for this review?

Hey everyone, looking for some insight into a very stressful dashboard issue.

I am a co-author (not the corresponding author) on a chemistry manuscript that was recently submitted to an ACS journal. The paper successfully went out for peer review, and I could track it on my ACS Paragon Plus dashboard initially.

However, I checked my dashboard today, and the manuscript has completely vanished. It is not under "Submitted," and it is not under "Decisions Made"—it is completely gone as if it never existed.

I haven’t received any automated emails from the journal about a decision, withdrawal, or updates to the author list. There has been some tension with the corresponding author (PhD senior) recently, and I’m terrified that they might have quietly removed my name from the paper or withdrawn it to submit elsewhere without telling me.

My questions are:

1. Does an ACS manuscript completely disappear from a co-author's dashboard if it gets a "Reject and Resubmit" decision or if the PI withdraws it?
2. If the PI successfully submitted a request to remove me from the author list mid-review, would the journal have emailed me to get my consent first, or would it just vanish like this?
3. What is the safest way to figure out what happened to the paper without alerting a senior?

Any advice or similar experiences with Paragon Plus would be greatly appreciated

Honestly, I'm getting pretty disillusioned with publishing, and I'm feeling like giving up in general.

I've had multiple rejections recently, with little to no feedback, and I'm starting to question what the long-term payoff is supposed to be. You can spend days or weeks working on a paper, submit it, get rejected, rework it for another journal, and then potentially go through the whole thing again.

I enjoy research, but I'm finding it hard to justify the amount of time and effort that goes into publishing when there's no guarantee it'll actually lead anywhere. Also, reading posts about how journals can be biased, focused on profit margins, or even political doesn't really help. Anyway.

Being a woman in engineering is another part of this. I often get really awful looks in my building and feel deeply unwelcome. I know this isn't always the case, and things are changing, but it's still a very hard thing to deal with day to day.

I don't know. I'm just getting tired of putting so much into this without being able to see where it's going.

Has anyone else been at this point? Particularly women in engineering or related fields, or people who've taken a less conventional path through research. Did things eventually start to make more sense?

honest opinion about how's my topic for review paper - precision fermentation for alternative protein: a critical synthesis of scale up bioprocessing, consumer dynamics and research gap taxonomy. Is it worth publishing?? I have been reviewing a few research papers for weeks now and I decided to go with this particular one. But now having second thoughts.