To prepare a feast of meal needing a lot of work and time. It is tricky to multi-tasking on chopping the vegetable, stirring the meat and plating the final cuisine at an efficient manner. This is also true for getting multiple manuscripts published during the same period of time.

I always have a sense of feeling, the best stage for academic productivity is to have one paper in submission, another one in revision, and the third one in acceptance. The reason is that the submission one have experienced multiple rounds of revisions and you finally push the ball to the journal editor waiting for the news either good or bad. You are in a worry but not-hurry mode (1-4).

• 1.worry
• 2.not-worry
• 3.hurry
• 4.not-hurry

The revision one has brought you some feedback from the editor and reviewers, now you need to come back with minor or major revisions within a period of time. You are in worry and hurry mode (1-3). Congratulations on the accepted one which only requires you to provide a final version or the proofing corrections. Now you are in hurry but not worry mode (2-3). You might want to ask what is 2-4 mode(i.e., not-worry and not-hurry) Well, that suggests ones are ejected at the submission stage. There is no need to worry and no need to hurry. Just accept it and find the next home.

<Last updated by Xi Zhang on Jul 2nd, 2025>