PLoS One

Our article actually originated from my side project. At first, I only wrote a few small scripts for significance testing. As the functionality increased, I organized it into a Shiny App. Later on, I decided to write an article and give it a try. However, because it was not driven by a scientific question, there were very few journals to choose from.

Then, on January 11, 2021, I submitted it to Plos One. It took one or two months to find an editor and reviewers, and finally on June 9, 2021, we received the feedback. One reviewer thought the idea was good but the statistical methods had issues and needed to be redesigned. The article was rejected but welcomed for resubmission.

Later, due to various reasons, the paper remained idle for two months. During a period of rest and recovery from an injury, I rewrote the program and the paper. On August 22, 2021, it was resubmitted. Once again, it took several months to find an editor and reviewers, and around April 2022, we received the reviewer's comments. Both reviewers suggested adding tips and explanations of the methods on the interface. They also discovered some small loopholes in the program that needed to be fixed. This required major revisions.

During this period, I made time to rewrite the program and the paper due to other matters. In May 2022, we resubmitted. The status with the editor lasted for about a month, and then on June 28, 2022, it was accepted. The proofreading process took place within a week. Interestingly, this day happened to be my birthday.

First, let me review the journal and then discuss the timeline for the peer review process, to provide everyone with some reference. I am also eager to know the timeline for my submission, but there is not much information available in the reviews.

First of all, I submitted to PLOS ONE because of my graduation requirements. Secondly, the journal is really not easy to get published in now. The academic editor for my paper is a top expert in the field. There were two reviewers in the first round of review and they provided 13 comments. Among them, they requested additional experiments that I intentionally omitted earlier because I found them troublesome, but they were required by the reviewers. Then, I believe everyone needs to objectively view PLOS ONE. Nowadays, many universities require master's graduates to publish papers. In the first year of graduate school, there are classes, and in the third year, there is an internship and a large thesis to write. How much time is there to write small papers, not to mention the time for the peer review process? I am also a reviewer for a journal in the first district of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the review time in the hands of the reviewers is only about a week (with a deadline of 21 days). This kind of journal greatly speeds up the review process, which is beneficial for researchers. Finally, any journal can have good articles, and any journal can also have poor quality articles. Choosing based on one's own needs is the most correct choice.