0

A quick question about paper submissions. I have submitted my paper to a journal for a peer review. For 2 months the status was "Editor assigned" but changed a few days ago to "editor invited". What does that mean? Should it not generally be the other way round? I mean.. I expected an editor is firstly invited and then assigned after acceptance. Could someone shed me any light about this?

Edit: In What does the typical workflow of a journal look like? How should I interpret a particular submission status? there is a well detailed description of submission process however my question concerns a very specific situation. More precisely, in the first place it was not clear to me the difference between Invited editor and Assigned Editor. Admittedly, this is explained in the post above. However, the main point of my question is about the change of status: Why an editor had been assigned to my paper and, weeks later, the editor became invited? I would have expected the other way round as I explained above. Hence my question. Below there is an answer of some probable situation I have thought about but I preferred to ask here just to see whether other probable situations came out.

InsideOut
  • 103
  • 5
  • Why not just ask the journal? – user438383 Mar 15 '23 at 09:08
  • @user438383 Thanks for the comment. I could ask to the journal, however I thought it was a ridiculous thing to ask.. – InsideOut Mar 15 '23 at 09:30
  • @Nobody Thanks for your comment. However I don't see how it answers to my question. Might it happen that an editor accept the invitation and, after a few weeks, another editor is invited to handle my paper? – InsideOut Mar 15 '23 at 09:32
  • This is not a site for speculative answers. I don't know what the edit is trying to achieve. And I really don't understand what you will personally gain by knowing this. It will not make your paper be published faster. It will not even make your next paper be published faster, as the exact same situation will probably not happen again. Go and do what @user438383 suggested and ask the journal if you are so keen on knowing the reason. – Sursula Mar 16 '23 at 14:07
  • Another potential duplicate target is My manuscript gets "with Editor" then "Editor invited", What is the main reasons for this? though I think the difference in "with Editor" duration favors Allure's answer here. Editage Insights offer some more potential reasons for Springer journals. – Anyon Mar 16 '23 at 15:50

1 Answers1

4

The most probable explanation is that the assigned editor is inactive and did not invite reviewers (which would also explain why you never saw the status change to "under review"). After two months the rest of the journal decided to invite a new editor, causing the status to move back to "editor invited".

Allure
  • 127,528
  • 50
  • 325
  • 493