Biomolecules

Research on biomarkers, a special issue was submitted. The efficiency was very high, with a first review taking 20 days and involving 4 reviewers. One of the reviewers raised many statistical questions, which required additional analysis. The second review took 4 days, with 3 reviewers providing additional comments mainly on language and formatting issues. After revisions were made, the paper was accepted within 2 days and underwent a 2-day proofreading process before being published online on the same day. The status changes in the system were as follows:

Pending review (Aug 26)
Under review (Aug 30)
Pending major revision (Sep 19)
Resubmit 1st round (Oct 4)
Pending minor revision (Oct 8)
Resubmit 2nd round (Oct 10)
Pending editor decision (Oct 10)
Accept (Oct 12)
Proof resubmit (Oct 14)

The reviewer's comments were sharp, but the overall opinion was leaning towards positive. However, in the end, the paper was rejected by the editor but encouraged for resubmission. After making revisions and conducting additional experiments based on the reviewer's comments, the paper went through two more rounds of review, which were much stricter than my stereotypical impression of MDPI. After resubmission, it took less than a month for the paper to be accepted, so the process was still quite fast.