APPLIED CATALYSIS B-ENVIRONMENTAL

11.11 Submission
11.14 Editor Insik Nam refused to review, citing formatting issues and requesting more references to ACB's own literature.
11.19 Resubmission
12.02 Editor's review
12.24 Received reviewer comments, 5 reviewers, 1 major revision and 4 minor revisions, editor provided a 30-day deadline for response.
01.21 Submitted reviewer comments and revised manuscript
01.30 Manuscript accepted
Overall, ACB's handling speed of manuscripts has accelerated compared to previous years, with acceptance possible within two months if everything goes smoothly. However, ACB's difficulty has increased, as the research group had several submissions rejected last year without even being reviewed. ACB mostly accepts manuscripts on photocatalysis and electrocatalysis in the field of environmental energy, focusing on hot topics and having a preference for manuscripts with large amounts of characterization data. Therefore, it is advisable to include more content in the main text and place any additional data that cannot fit in the main text into the supplementary information. The journal has a high self-citation rate, which indirectly contributes to the improvement of the journal's impact factor.
I would like to thank editor G. L. Puma for their careful work and also express my gratitude to the reviewers for their recognition of my work.

After submitting to ACB, it was quickly sent for review. However, the review process took 45 days. Two weeks after receiving the review comments, we received feedback from both reviewers. After revising the manuscript, we had to wait for more than 20 days only to receive a rejection letter. One of the reviewers accepted the paper, but the second reviewer accused us of having serious integrity issues, using the excuse that the names of the reference catalysts and the referenced literature did not match. They strongly recommended rejection. To our surprise, we carefully checked the references and found no issues. We decided to appeal, which took another month of back-and-forth. The editor agreed to have us resubmit through the system, but after a week, the editor rejected the paper, citing a low submission volume as the reason. It's truly disgusting.

Fortunately, I had better luck with ACS Catalysis. From submission to acceptance, it only took 42 days, including the Chinese New Year holiday. All I want to say is that ACB is not worth pursuing. Thank you, ACB, for teaching me a lesson.