IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy

I'm back again, and I chose this journal again because I was satisfied with the speed of the review process and the submission experience before. However, this time it is much slower... I wonder if it's because of the pandemic.

Submitted on 26th January 2021.
Revised on 13th June 2021.

During the process, I contacted the Editorial Office (ADM) three times, respectively at 3 months, 3 and a half months, and 4 months. The first time, ADM replied that the manuscript was still in the review process, but they did not respond to the second and third attempts. In the end, I had no choice but to find the editor's personal email address and sent a reminder. The editor immediately responded, stating that they had found three reviewers and urged the Associate Editor (AE) to expedite the process. The next day, AE provided me with the comments from the three reviewers for revise and resubmit.

Among the three reviewers, one seems to be a junior colleague, and their comments were more challenging. They even referred to our previously published paper and requested a comparison... (Because this paper had been under review for 4 and a half months, and a lot of subsequent work was based on this research, we couldn't wait any longer and decided to submit it elsewhere, but it got accepted before this paper's review process...) The remaining two reviewers provided more moderate comments. All three reviewers were professional and raised valuable questions.

Second submission:
2021-12-13 Submitted
2022-01-26 Rejected, with extensive comments from 6 reviewers. Upon careful examination, it can be seen that all the comments suggest major revisions, as they all mention "should be modified in the next version". The editor considered the abundance of comments and some unresolved issues as reasons for rejection, but also acknowledged the article's innovative aspects and allowed for resubmission. However, due to concerns about not being accepted before graduation, I chose to submit to another journal with a more consistent publication speed. Overall, as long as I don't encounter unreasonable reviewers, this journal has a relatively fast reviewing process, quick rejections, and the reviewers' comments are generally valuable. The overall submission experience is positive.