Heliyon

Submitted one article at the end of February, which was rejected by four journals after external review because the authors had graduated and couldn't conduct experimental modifications. Therefore, it was submitted to a comprehensive journal without recommended reviewers.
Received revision comments in early April. One reviewer suggested major revisions and another suggested minor revisions. The reviewer for major revisions had expertise in the same field and provided 17 modification suggestions, including language issues, and also requested citation of several of his own papers. The reviewer for minor revisions did not provide any specific comments, just asked for the addition of some theoretical formula-related information. It is unclear whether this reviewer is acquainted or from a different field. The editor's suggestion was to cite 1-2 papers, without excessive citation as requested by the reviewers.
Submitted the revised version on May 3, but it remained in the "submitted to journal" status.
Sent a reminder on June 21, and the editor handled it on June 29.
Sent for review on July 2, and two reviewers completed their reviews on July 7 and July 20.
On July 24, the editor's decision was rejection, only to realize that a new reviewer had been added, who also recommended rejection. The editor directly rejected it... speechless. This is the first time that the opinion was not revised directly, and it took a long time to go back and forth. This article will not be submitted again as all authors have graduated and cannot conduct experiments.
Note: All authors' emails need to be associated with their names and cannot be purely QQ emails, for example.

I can't remember clearly, but I will roughly explain the review process. The paper was submitted on October 28, 2022, in the field of economics. I heard that the review process was fast before, so I didn't expect it to take 6 months from submission to acceptance (I read in the comments that the editor was changed during this period). The first submission was made in mid-October 2022, but it was sent back due to formatting issues. After making the necessary modifications, it was resubmitted, and it took about a month for it to be under review. Initially, the assigned reviewers could not be found, so two reviewers were invited, one accepted and one declined. Another reviewer was later found, and on February 15, their feedback was received. The authors were given one month to make revisions. Overall, it required major revisions, as one reviewer provided many comments, but the paper could still be improved. The other reviewer was more superficial and had many repetitive comments. Three to four days before the deadline, it changed from "with editor" to "under review" for about 20 days. Then, it took 10-20 days to change to "accept in decision" (around March 31). The next day, the authors received a request to modify the author contribution section (according to the journal template). On April 3, it was displayed as accepted.