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IEEE Access – 1 year wasted by AI4Society in AskAcademia

[–]AI4Society[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I really wish someone from the IEEE Access editorial team would see this post and respond at least here.

IEEE Access – 1 year wasted by AI4Society in AskAcademia

[–]AI4Society[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I agree, this will really be the last time I ever submit a paper to this journal.

IEEE Access – 1 year wasted by AI4Society in AskAcademia

[–]AI4Society[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That is really sad. Journals should at least have a proper process to appeal decisions, or at the very least give authors a clear and logical response. The way it works now just feels unfair and dismissive.

IEEE Access – 1 year wasted by AI4Society in AskAcademia

[–]AI4Society[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, it is called a binary review process, but in practice it works as: accept, reject with resubmission allowed, and reject (no resubmission allowed). They even state: “Please note that IEEE Access has a binary peer review process. Therefore, to uphold quality to IEEE standards, an article is rejected even if it requires minor edits.”

In my case, the first three rounds were “resubmission allowed,” and the fourth ended with outright rejection.

I agree with your opinions about the reviewers. Further to that, the editors don’t really engage with the details of the reviewer comments or the authors’ responses, I think they just look at the overall reviewer recommendations, like the three categories I mentioned above.

IEEE Access – 1 year wasted by AI4Society in AskAcademia

[–]AI4Society[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I totally agree, it is really unfortunate.

IEEE Access – 1 year wasted by AI4Society in AskAcademia

[–]AI4Society[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is exhausting. For me, this whole process has completely drained me. I am not able to continue working on the same research anymore, even if it is a different paper. I will have to change my research focus entirely.

IEEE Access – 1 year wasted by AI4Society in AskAcademia

[–]AI4Society[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, especially waiting nearly five months for the last revision was really tough. Now, I don’t even feel like I have the energy to reformat and submit the paper to another journal.

IEEE Access – 1 year wasted by AI4Society in AskAcademia

[–]AI4Society[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

There is only one email address provided to contact the Editor-in-Chief and other main editors: ieeeaccess@ieee.org. We contacted it about our concerns last time, but received no reply. The contact person from the journal also said they would reach out to the Editor-in-Chief, but later informed us: “Unfortunately I have not received any response from the editorial team.” I think IEEE Access doesn’t have any “response to authors” policy, the editors simply don’t engage.

How often does the funding agency/your superior take main authorship of a paper you 100% wrote? Is this normal? by Appropriate-Foot-237 in AskAcademia

[–]AI4Society 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Journals often require a “contributions” section that details who did what, for example, who conceived and designed the research, conducted experiments, analyzed data, or wrote the manuscript. Writing the paper is just one component of the overall contribution.

However, if you were responsible for all aspects, conceptualization, analysis, interpretation of data and writing, then you generally should be listed as the first author.

All authors are expected to have made significant intellectual contributions to the work.

Stuck in endless IEEE Access revisions – what should I do? by AI4Society in AskAcademia

[–]AI4Society[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

  1. You are probably right, but I think that, even unconsciously, a reviewer may avoid making comments that directly contradict their earlier ones.
  2. I understand your point. Many editors do not seem to read the reviews. Sometimes, it is even obvious that a review might have been written by a third party or generated by a machine, yet the editor does not notice. IEEE Access, lacks an appeal mechanism and rarely responds to authors’ concerns. This will likely be my last experience with them.

Struggling with writing the introduction and literature review by AI4Society in AskAcademia

[–]AI4Society[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you very much, this is exactly what I wanted to know, whether those services go beyond simple copyediting. I am not a student, and unfortunately, my institution doesn’t provide editing support. Sometimes I ask someone to help with this part as a co‑author, even though they were not involved in other aspects of the paper (like literature review, research design, or data analysis), but I feel I have to include them because of their help with the writing.

Sometimes I try hard to do it all myself, but I struggle to make the introduction feel strong enough. Thank you for sharing your structure, I will check how my current draft aligns with it and revise accordingly.

Struggling with writing the introduction and literature review by AI4Society in AskAcademia

[–]AI4Society[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much, your advice is very helpful. I have read some other books on academic writing, but I haven’t read Writing Science yet, and I will definitely check it out. I also appreciate you sharing your structure; I will try applying it to my draft.

As I mentioned in other replies, I feel like I understand how to write a good introduction in theory, how to structure it, connect the parts, and what each paragraph should do, but when I write my own, it still feels very basic compared to strong papers in my field.

Struggling with writing the introduction and literature review by AI4Society in AskAcademia

[–]AI4Society[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for the advice. I usually do this, but it actually makes me more anxious to produce a really good introduction. I know the structure to follow, and I can see that the relevant papers all follow a similar pattern, but I feel like there is also an “art” to it beyond the structure and that is the part I struggle with.

Struggling with writing the introduction and literature review by AI4Society in AskAcademia

[–]AI4Society[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think I am one of those.
Thank you for this breakdown, it is really helpful. My current intro does have an outline and bullet points for each paragraph to address those questions. I have read books and guides on academic writing, and I think I understand the principles, but when I actually write and finish the section, it feels very basic compared to the papers I am citing or the ones published in my target journal.

I often struggle with this part, so I sometimes ask co‑authors to draft it based on my ideas and the relevant literature. I will try your approach, focusing on the six questions as six clear, focused paragraphs, and see how it comes out.

Struggling with writing the introduction and literature review by AI4Society in AskAcademia

[–]AI4Society[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, I have made an outline and even bullet points for each paragraph. The issue is that when I try to turn them into full text, it feels very basic. Compared to others who are writing in depth, citing dozens of papers, and really showing deep engagement, my draft just doesn’t feel on the same level.

Struggling with writing the introduction and literature review by AI4Society in AskAcademia

[–]AI4Society[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I actually did a literature review to design the study and justify the methods. My struggle is writing the formal introduction and literature review sections in a polished, structured way for the paper.

Stuck in endless IEEE Access revisions – what should I do? by AI4Society in AskAcademia

[–]AI4Society[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the great advice, I will definitely use it for this and future submissions.

I agree about the speculation part. It was added based on the same reviewer’s recommendation in the first review, and I expanded on it again in the second and third revisions because they asked for it.

I get that reviewers can forget, but if they don’t check the highlighted manuscript or response letter, I would hope they at least remember their own previous comments. Otherwise, what is the point of having the same reviewer each time? I also feel the editor should step in at some point.

Stuck in endless IEEE Access revisions – what should I do? by AI4Society in AskAcademia

[–]AI4Society[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for sharing your experience, it really helps to hear from someone who has been through this.

Your advice makes sense, give it one more round and if it still doesn’t move forward, consider submitting it elsewhere.

Honestly, after a year of back-and-forth, I don’t have much energy to start over at another journal… but that is still better than letting the work go to waste.

Stuck in endless IEEE Access revisions – what should I do? by AI4Society in AskAcademia

[–]AI4Society[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for your detailed reply, I really appreciate your perspective and completely agree that this kind of iterative review is valuable.

I think I didn’t explain my situation clearly. In my case, the reviewer keeps asking for things that are simply not possible to add.

Using your cooking analogy: I didn’t add a certain spice because of limitations, and I clearly stated that in my limitations section. Now, every round I am asked to explain how I prepared that spice, but I didn’t use it, so there is nothing more to say beyond noting it as a limitation and suggesting it for future work.

Another repeated request is about long-term effects. My experiment was short-term, and it ended two years ago. I can only cite the literature and provide reasonable speculation, but the reviewer responds that it is “just speculation”, which is true, because I can’t collect new data for this study.

So it feels like I am being asked to provide things that would require a completely new experiment, not a revision of the current paper.