The general process of submission is as follows (different journals and publishing houses are slightly different):
According to the requirements, the paper text, cover letter and related information are put on the submission system of the journal website. After completion, the submission status shows "Submitted to Editorial Department" or similar words.
After the submission, the editorial department of the journal will send an email to the correspondent to inform him to sign the copyright agreement. Depending on the journal, the submission status may or may not change to "Form Perceived Complete" or "Submission Awaiting Author's Approval". When finished, the status will change back to Submitted to Editorial Department or Submitted in Process. This process will be completed in a day or two.
Then the technical editor will review the format of the paper, and if the format is wrong, call back and revise it. This process won't take long, and it can certainly be completed within a week.
After the technical editor has passed, the editor in charge of academic affairs should have a general look first. If the article doesn't meet the theme of the journal, or the article is really bad, they will reject it directly. But the wording of the rejection letter is usually euphemistic, similar to teasing you, not because it's not your fault, but because we ridicule you inappropriately as a good person, and we can definitely find someone else's land and so on. After rejection, the status will be changed to "Submitted with Decision" or "Manuscript No More Considered". This process can be completed in about a week, so if there is no news for more than a week, it should be submitted through editing. The fastest time for me, I signed a copyright agreement and was rejected by the editor within 24 hours. What a sad reminder.
If the editor thinks it's ok, he will select several colleagues in this field from the submission information (it may or may not be recommended by you, and the evaluation is generally anonymous, so you don't know who the reviewer is) and send it to him for review. Reviewers will give their comments back to the editor after they finish reviewing the manuscript. At this point, the status will remain as Submitted to Editorial Department or Submitted in Process. This process is as short as a few days and as long as more than a year. Different journals have different speeds. In my previous group, some manuscripts can complete the preliminary review steps in two weeks, and one has been used for 13 months. Netizens introduced the review time of each journal on the website, which is sometimes not very accurate, but it can be used as a reference.
After receiving the opinions of several reviewers, the editor will comprehensively consider and decide whether the article is directly passed, greatly revised, slightly revised or rejected. If it needs to be revised, the deadline will be clearly written in the email to the correspondent, and if it doesn't need to do a lot of experiments, it will give about 60 days to revise. At this point, the submission status will change to "Incomplete Revision and Submission". After the revision is completed, it will be submitted to the submission system, and the status will be changed to "Revision pending the approval of the author" or "Revision and submission received by the editorial department".
After receiving the revised draft, the editor can decide whether to stay or continue the revision. If the editor finds it difficult to make a decision, he will send it to the reviewer. This time, the reviewers may or may not be the same as before. This step may take a day or two to several months. The submission system will repeatedly display the previous submission status.
If all goes well, the correspondent will receive an acceptance letter, and the status of the submission system will be changed to "accepted manual" or "submission with decision".
Some agreements may be signed in the future, and the status will be changed to "Certificate Ready for Audit" and "Certificate Opinion Received". This will be finished in a day or two.
After the agreement is signed, the staff will proofread and typeset, which will take several days to several weeks. Depending on the way of submission, the article may be seen by the subscriber before proofreading and typesetting (at this time, the pdf typesetting of the paper downloaded by the reader is ugly), or it may be seen later.
After proofreading and typesetting, the full text in formal format can be seen on the website of the publishing house. Although the typesetting of the pdf file downloaded by readers has been officially completed, there is no official serial number and page number.
A few weeks later, it was officially published. At this point, the official serial number and page number are already on the web page, in the pdf file downloaded by the reader.
There may still be many journals that need to be submitted by mail or letter, but I have subscribed to several journals, especially those of several major publishing houses (American Chemical Society, Science Direct, Willie, Royal Chemical Society, springer), and all of them have completed the submission/revision process on the above-mentioned system.