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I submitted an article to a philosophy journal published by Springer. It has been 6 months since I submitted but the status keeps changing. It went under review for 2 days (after going through a normal sequel), then an editor was assigned, then reviewers were assigned, then it was under review for 2 months, then reviewers again assigned, and now an editor has been assigned. I can't figure out what is happening in this whole process.

Can someone out here help me to get a clarification of what is going on here?

CrimsonDark
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Sanaa NiMaisha
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About all one can say with confidence is that they've encountered some trouble in the peer review process. That doesn't mean it's your fault or anything to do with your paper, it just means they encountered something that, ideally, would not happen.

Example: they invited 3 reviewers to start, one of whom accepted (under review) -> one day later the reviewer comes back and say they don't think they should review the paper, while the other two declined (no reviewers left, status switches back to editor assigned) -> editor then invites another three reviewers (reviewers assigned) -> one of whom accepted (under review).

This is obviously not ideal - the ideal is all three of the initial reviewers agreeing and writing a constructive review - but it's very common. There's nothing to do except wait.

Allure
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In some rare cases, it might also happen that the three reviewers couldn't come to a conclusive decision about the paper. Therefore, a fresh reviewer needs to be assigned again, which requires the intervention of the editor again.

codeR
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