Review Process (orgsci-review-process)

When to trigger

• You are about to submit and want to set expectations
• You received a decision letter and need to interpret who decided and why
• You are unsure how Organization Science routing differs from a departmental area-editor journal

The decentralized senior-editor model

Organization Science runs a decentralized model: Senior Editors plus an Editorial Review Board, under Editor-in-Chief Lamar Pierce (Washington University in St. Louis). Each Senior Editor has strong autonomy — an SE can independently accept, reject, or request an R&R. This differs sharply from sister journal Management Science's fixed departmental area-editor routing: here the SE decides your paper, not a department head dispatching to an area editor. Routing follows a conflict-of-interest cascade — the EIC handles deputy-editor submissions and deputy editors handle senior-editor submissions — so editors do not adjudicate their own work.

What happens to your submission

• Desk review. The EIC/SE can see the cover letter and abstract. An unconvincing contribution, poor fit, transparency gap, or excessive length can produce a desk reject (overlong submissions may be returned with an option to resubmit shorter).
• Peer review. If sent out, it goes to at least two reviewers; follow the submission guidelines' double-blind preparation rules and keep the main manuscript anonymized. The cover letter is seen by the EIC and SE but not by reviewers.
• Decision. The SE synthesizes reviews into accept / reject / R&R. First-round accepts are rare; the realistic best early outcome is a major R&R.

Reading the decision letter

• Identify the decider. The SE letter is binding; reviewer comments are inputs the SE weights — when they differ, the SE's framing governs your revision priorities.
• Find the core concern. Usually overall contribution, mechanism, or fit — not just method, given the "novelty is neither necessary nor sufficient" stance and the acceptance that causal identification is often impossible.
• Note the window. The submission guidelines ask authors to resubmit invited revisions within 6 months unless the editor grants an exception.

Anti-patterns

• Treating reviewer comments as equal to the SE's verdict and ignoring the SE's prioritization.
• Expecting area-editor routing or ignoring the 2025 data/methods transparency policy.
• Assuming a desk return is a rejection when it may be a fixable compliance or length issue.

Review-risk pass for Organization Science

Use this as a second-pass capability check. First lock a level map, a mechanism paragraph, and the cover-letter contribution statement; then test whether the manuscript addresses interdisciplinary organization reviewers who ask whether the mechanism travels across levels of analysis.

• Primary move: Turn likely reviewer objections into a ledger with response evidence, manuscript location, and the decision-maker who must be convinced first.
• Decision ledger: return claim / evidence / blocker / next edit rows so the next pass can patch the manuscript directly.
• Neighbor test: compare against AMJ for empirical management framing, ASQ for organization-theory depth, Management Science for formal/quantitative operations; if the neighboring outlet has the stronger audience claim, recommend re-routing before polishing.
• Submission-ready gate: before final advice, re-open resources/official-source-map.md for upload-week rules and name the one live-check item that could change the recommendation.

Output format

【Decider】Senior Editor (autonomous accept/reject/R&R); EIC Lamar Pierce; COI cascade routing
【Stage reached】desk return / desk reject / out for review / R&R / reject
【Core concern】overall contribution / mechanism / fit (method usually secondary)
【SE vs reviewers】whose framing governs the revision
【Window】6-month invited-revision window unless editor grants an exception
【Next step】orgsci-rebuttal