What does "Awaiting SE Preliminary Decision" mean for IEEE transactions journal?

Question

I have a manuscript with IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology under peer review from early Jan 2020. Today, there has been a status update on the journal's ScholarOne online portal which says "Awaiting SE Preliminary Decision".

What does this mean?

What does the 'SE' stand for?
Why is the decision to be made by the SE classified as "preliminary"? Will there by further non-preliminary decisions made at the editorial office?

@Azor Only partially. I am looking for answers to the two numbered questions in my post. — Dr Krishnakumar Gopalakrishnan, Apr 21 '20 at 01:18
@AzorAhai I think it doesn't. The question here is about the contents of the box labelled "editorial decision" in the typical workflow. — lighthouse keeper, Apr 21 '20 at 09:03

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 21 '20 at 08:50

A reasonable guess would be "section editor", that is, an editor responsible for a thematic section.
The wording suggests that there will be a further check. In some journals, there is a final check by the editor-in-chief for every article. Normally, you can expect that the outcome of this check is positive, as editor-in-chiefs are usually very busy and inclined to trust their editors.

What does "Awaiting SE Preliminary Decision" mean for IEEE transactions journal?

1 Answers1