Appeals and complaints
How to ask us to look again at a decision, or to complain about how a manuscript was handled, and what happens next.
- Applies to
- Authors
- Last updated
- 26 Oct 2026
- Questions
- [email protected]
In short
- Appeal a rejection once, within 30 days, from your manuscript page: “Appeal this decision”.
- The editor-in-chief, or a senior editor who took no part in the decision, answers within 14 days; the answer is final.
- Complaints about how a manuscript or a request was handled, or about a policy, go to [email protected].
Appealing a decision
Authors may appeal a rejection once, after peer review or at screening, within 30 days of the decision letter. The corresponding author appeals from the manuscript page in My SciPub, with Appeal this decision: the grounds, point by point, and a file if it helps; for example, that a reviewer misread the work or that important information was missed. Disagreeing with the outcome is not on its own a reason. A withdrawal or a closure for an unpaid charge cannot be appealed. Appealing declines an open transfer offer, and accepting a transfer closes an appeal.
The appeal is decided by the journal’s editor-in-chief or, when the editor-in-chief made the decision or is one of its authors, by another senior member of the editorial board whom the office picks; never by the handling editor who made the decision. When the editor-in-chief is not active, the editorial office decides. The decision on the appeal is final.
What happens next
Complaints
If you are unhappy with how a manuscript, a review, a request or a payment was handled, or with our policies, write to [email protected]. The office looks into it and may pass it to the journal’s editorial board; we answer within two working days to say who is handling it. An appeal of a decision is made on the manuscript page, not by email.
Concerns about research misconduct or about a published article are for the ethics team instead: [email protected] (see Publication ethics).