In Press vs Under Review—What’s the Difference in Academia?

If you’ve just submitted a research manuscript for peer review or publication, you may notice that it’s “in press” or “under review”, respectively. What do these terms mean? Do they bode well or ill for all that work you’ve put in?

Before you hit the panic button, wait! An article “in press” or “under review” is usually not a bad thing. Here’s everything you need to know about in press vs under review.

Articles “In Press”

First, let’s take a look at articles “in press”.

An article “in press” is an article that’s been accepted for publication but still hasn’t been assigned a publication issue or volume. With such articles, you’re assured of your work being published, even if there are no details yet on when and where.

In-press articles are already peer-reviewed, even though they may not contain all the bibliographic details yet. Once the publication details are finalized, the “in press” tag is removed from the article.

There are three types of articles in press:

• Uncorrected Proofs: Uncorrected proofs are articles that are yet to receive some corrections from their authors. They are not yet deemed to be in their final shape and hence, are not ready for final publication.
• Corrected Proofs: Corrected proofs contain corrections from their authors, as the name suggests. Any corrections, if any at all are left, are usually very minor—the majority of the article remains unchanged before the final publication.In most cases, the only thing added to these documents are page numbers and particulars about the issue they’re going to be published in.
• Accepted Manuscripts: Accepted manuscripts are those, as the name suggests, that have been accepted for publication. The text may undergo a few changes before the article is finally published and these articles have not been typeset.

Articles “Under Review”

Articles that are submitted for peer review are typically the ones that go “under review”. Sometimes, you may see that it’s “in review”—the two mean the same thing, which is that your article is being reviewed by experts on the topic you’ve written about.

Some publications may also use both terms to represent two different stages of the review process. In such a case, here’s what both terms could mean:

• Articles in Review: If an article carries the “in review” tag, it means that it’s been successfully submitted to the journal and is now undergoing verification. At this point, the journal or publishing house will be more concerned with the uploading of all necessary documents and your work being suited to the journal’s theme.

The tasks related to this stage are usually undertaken by the journal’s editorial staff itself.

• Articles under Review: If your article is under review, it means that it’s passed the “in review” stage of editorial checks. The publishing house is satisfied with all the documents, details, and content submitted, with the latter also deemed in line with the journal’s theme and content.Now, in this stage, external experts on the subject that you’ve written about are verifying your paper and assessing its accuracy and relevance.

Sometimes, if a publishing house is using both terms to segment its review process, the names of the two stages may be interchanged, i.e, articles undergoing editorial checks may be labeled “under review” and articles undergoing expert assessment may be labeled “in review”.

If you’re unsure about the status of your document, it’s best to check with the publishing house.

If the publication house uses only either one of the terms for its review process, a date change is usually made against the status of the article, denoting that your article has moved on from the initial review to the next stage.

How long each step takes purely depends on the publishing house. Some may send your paper to multiple reviewers, and based on their responses, the time to publication can vary.

If it’s taking too long, a preprint version of your work may be made available to read; if, or once, reviewer comments are received, you’ll be allowed to revise your work, and the revised version will then replace all earlier versions of your article in the journal.

The Bottom Line

Both “in press” and “under review” are, therefore, terms that bode well for your work. However, in the latter case, there’s still a possibility of the work being rejected if it doesn’t align with the journal’s theme.