When Journals Have No Obvious Academic Leader: Who Is Accountable When Peer Review Fails?

At the time, I was eagerly awaiting a decision on a manuscript describing an innovative NHS community-based pain support service. Like most authors, I assumed that a decision, whether favourable or not, would arrive within a reasonable timeframe.

Sixteen months later, the manuscript is still under review.

So here I am again, up to my waist in the muddy trenches of publishing peer reviewed research. What began as mild frustration has evolved into fascination with a more fundamental question: when a manuscript disappears into an editorial black hole, who is actually responsible for getting it back out?

 

Into the Void: The Manuscript Waiting Game

The manuscript was submitted to a well-known journal owned by one of the world's leading academic publishers. More than sixteen months later, it remains under review. Multiple enquiries have generated courteous but generic responses. A formal escalation produced another update indicating that additional reviewers were still being sought, but no timeline for resolution could be provided.

What surprised me doing this process was discovering that some respected journals do not operate through the traditional model of an academic Editor-in-Chief. In some cases, editorial operations appear to be managed primarily by professional publishing staff who may or may not have subject expertise,  working alongside large editorial boards.

There is nothing inherently problematic about this model. Professional editorial teams play a vital role in scholarly publishing and often bring consistency, efficiency and operational expertise. However, it may create a different accountability structure when things go wrong.

Traditionally, authors could identify a senior academic leader with overall responsibility for editorial standards, decision-making and journal performance. If an exceptional problem occurred, there was a clear academic route for escalation.

Where that role is absent or less visible, several questions arise:
• Who ultimately owns responsibility for excessive delays?
• Who provides subject-discipline leadership for the journal?
• Who intervenes when manuscripts become trapped in prolonged review cycles?
• Who communicates directly with authors when normal processes fail?

In our case, despite a review period exceeding sixteen months and a formal complaint, no senior editorial representative has contacted us directly to explain the delay, outline a recovery plan, or acknowledge the seriousness of the situation.

The consequences are not merely inconvenient. Publication delays can affect career progression, funding applications, project planning, reporting requirements and access to publication budgets tied to financial or academic year cycles.

Perhaps this experience is simply an unfortunate outlier. Yet it highlights a broader issue. Scholarly publishing depends not only on reviewers and editorial systems, but also on visible academic leadership and accountability.

The key question is not whether every journal should have a traditional Editor-in-Chief. Rather, when editorial processes break down, who is ultimately responsible for ensuring that they are restored and brought to a timely resolution?

While journals typically maintain robust procedures for addressing explicit publishing issues, a broader challenge arises from the structural inertia that can develop when complex, non-standard editorial situations emerge. Navigating these institutional bottlenecks is a common source of friction within scholarly communication and can significantly delay the dissemination of research. Researchers are increasingly held to demanding standards of accountability and timeliness. A genuine publishing partnership therefore requires journals to bring the same sense of urgency and administrative commitment to resolving systemic delays when routine processes stall.

P.S. (1 November 2026): Since this blog was published, we have formally requested withdrawal of the manuscript from the journal. We have now been informed that our request is being dealt with. After more than sixteen months in editorial limbo, it will be interesting to see how many additional months are required for the journal to process a withdrawal request.