What does it mean to change the required status of completed reviews from to review each week?

Question

I submitted my article to a journal from Springer in September, two months later it changed the status to "Required Reviews Completed". Then within a week, it became "Under Review", and from then on every week it changed between "Required Reviews Completed" and "Under Review" to this day.

What could be the reason for this to happen and what does it mean?

Perhaps the editor rejected a review for some reason and asked for more. Perhaps the canonical question here can answer it in part: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/55665/75368 — Buffy, Jan 01 '22 at 14:44
Does this answer your question? What does the typical workflow of a journal look like? — Buzz, Jan 01 '22 at 16:03

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 01 '22 at 14:51

Here is one possible scenario:

The editor invited n reviewers at first. After receiving the reviews of that group, the status became "Required Reviews Completed". Then, for some reason, like lack of consensus between their opinions or even contradictions between their assessments, the editor has decided to invite another set of m reviewers. In the meanwhile, the editor might (inadvertently) set the counter of the required review submissions (before the completion of the review process) to 1 while they have already invited m. So, every time a review is submitted, the status becomes "Required Reviews Completed" because of that counter (which was set to 1), and it again jumps to "Under Review" because some of those m reviews are yet to be submitted.

What does it mean to change the required status of completed reviews from to review each week?

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