Q: What does the change from "Under consideration" to "Decision pending" mean?

First of all to assure you, there is nothing known as "bad sign". Papers get accepted in 1 month or even get rejected in 1 year. The only thing which matters is the decision, so relax.

Coming back to your question, when a paper is submitted it is first assigned to an Associate Editor who is in charge of sending your manuscript to peer-review after initial checks.

So its normal that your paper goes from "Submission" goes to "Under consideration". Here "Under consideration" means that your paper has passed the initial check and now it is assigned to an Associate Editor. It is at this stage the Associate Editor will decide whether it is necessary for the paper to enter the peer-review process.

The Associate Editor(AE) usually takes 3-4 weeks to make a decision on the manuscript. I am pretty sure that under "editorial consideration" means it is with the AE. Since its decision pending you will be getting the decision soon.

I would suggest you that rather than thinking whether its a "bad sign" or not, please focus on the reviews of the AE as they are extremely knowledgeable and their opinions/criticisms will help you a lot in improving your paper.

Hope this helps.

Awesome response, Amit! :-)

Adding our few bits to Amit’s explanation/response, line by line.

Before that, a quick note about journal statuses: They differ across journals, even for those that may use the same submission management system, because each journal typically makes some tweaks to the base system to suit their workflow.

Coming to your statuses now…

• ‘Submission’ and ‘Under consideration’ simultaneously: This means that the submission was acknowledged and immediately went into consideration. The admin team must have checked for factors such as the journal guidelines and basic scope match, and decided to pass this on to the Associate Editor (AE) for their consideration.
• ‘Under consideration’ for a month: The AE must have taken a month to get to it, or to make a decision on it. The AE typically checks for factors such as the novelty of the research and the quality of the paper, to decide whether or not to send it for peer review.
• ‘Under editorial consideration’ and ‘Decision pending’ simultaneously: The AE must have had a look at the paper and made a decision on it, and communicated this decision to the Editor-in-Chief (EIC), who makes the final decision.
• ‘Decision pending’: The ball is in the EIC’s court now.
• Does this mean a rejection: Not always. A change to the EIC decision status without going for peer review does not always mean a reject. It may also mean that they would want you to submit the manuscript to a sister journal (one in the same publisher family). This could be a strong possibility given that your manuscript was ‘Under consideration’ for quite a while. Another possibility could be that they are interested in it, but perhaps as a shorter piece, such as a letter to the editor. However, to echo Amit’s suggestion, you shouldn’t worry so much about what the outcome will be. Just wait for the outcome, which should hopefully be communicated in a few days’ time. If it’s a reject, you can make changes as necessary and submit to another journal. If it’s an accept (with a review/revisions), well, you’re one step closer to publication here. And that’s quite a good thing too. :-)

Hope that helps. For a better understanding of journal statuses, you may wish to consider investing in this handbook: A guide to understanding journal statuses

All the best for the next status/step!