Q: Why has my paper’s status gone back to “Reviewer invited” after being under review over a month?
I submitted a manuscript 2 months ago. I made an inquiry 1 month after submission and got a response which said “One review has been received. The second one is lagging”. Just after that, the status was changed to “reviewer invited”, but the status has not yet been changed to “under review” for 1 month since then. How should I make a reminder again?
Based on the status changes, I can think of two possibilities:
1. It is possible that the second reviewer declined the review invitation later, so the editor had to start looking for a reviewer again.
2. The other possibility is that the second review is weak or conflicting, and the editor needs a fresh perspective, so he wants to send the paper for an additional review.
Since the status is still "Reviewer invited," it seems that the editor has sent out review invitations, but no one has accepted yet. Once a reviewer accepts the review invitation, the status will change to "Under review."
You can write to the journal asking what exactly is the status of your paper at the moment and by when you can expect the peer review to be completed.
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