Q: What is the meaning of 'Awaiting EiC Decision' in Manuscript Central?

Hello Jyotirmayee – welcome to the forum!

To get right into it, your (seniors’) understanding of the ‘Awaiting EiC Decision’ in ScholarOne's Manuscript Central (called ‘Decision in Process’ in some other systems) is correct to some extent. The Editor-in-Chief (EiC) makes the final decision on manuscript, with the associate editor (AE) making the initial decision. However, the final decision may not be only that of an acceptance or a rejection. They may sometimes ask you to submit to a sister (related) journal instead (in case it’s a big publisher with multiple journals). At times, they may ask you to revise and resubmit the manuscript.

Those possibilities though are usually in the early days after submission. As you submitted your manuscript in January, and it’s been four months since then, perhaps your manuscript went through a peer review and perhaps you also needed to make a minor or major revision and then resubmit. (These details aren’t provided in your query.) So, the present status may mean that the EiC now needs to make a decision based on the peer review comments or on the revised manuscript.

As we don’t know the stages since submission to now, we wouldn’t be able to predict the EiC’s decision. In fact, you may have a better inkling of this. If you think the manuscript had progressed smoothly in the stages before this, it could be an accept. If however you think there were some issues found in the peer review, it may not be positive. At any rate, you need to wait for the final decision by the EiC. Good luck for that!

Until then, you may find it worthwhile to go through the following resources to understand journal decision-making better:

• What can I expect when the status changes to 'Awaiting EiC Decision' very quickly?
• What is the meaning of "decision in process" status?
• Who takes the final decision on a manuscript: the AE or EiC?
• Editorial decision-making: what are the possible outcomes for a manuscript?