"Awaiting AE recommendation" before first notification of acceptance or rejection

What does "Awaiting AE recommendation" mean for the first notification (not after revision)? I sent my paper to an IEEE Transactions journal and I am waiting for the first notification and the status is now "Awaiting AE recommendation." Could I conclude that my paper is accepted?

190k 41 41 gold badges 661 661 silver badges 931 931 bronze badges asked Oct 8, 2015 at 4:45 91 1 1 gold badge 1 1 silver badge 2 2 bronze badges Possible duplicate of What does the typical workflow of a journal look like? Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 5:00

@jakebeal While you and I may be able to identify the relevant stage in the "canonical" workflow, I don't see how someone who doesn't know what "Awaiting AE recommendation" means can. When voting to close with "canonical" question like this, I think it's appropriate to point the OP to the specific part that is relevant and/or edit the canonical answer so it explicitly addresses this question.

Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 5:16 How long did it take to get this status from the time of submission? Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 5:56

@jakebeal: To our knowledge the answer may a subset of the post you prescribed, but this question seems to be more specific. It isn't a duplicate of that post.

Commented Oct 8, 2015 at 6:00

1 Answer 1

AE stands for Associate Editor. According to the process described in IEEE Transactions, "Awaiting AE recommendation" status means that the AE has collected all reviews from the reviewers who were assigned to review your manuscript and that the AE's decision for acceptance is pending.

After this phase, the AE would send her/his report to the EiC (Editor in Cheif), for the final decision on accepting the manuscript for publication in the journal based on the review results and the report from the AE.

You would find more detail of the process here.

answered Oct 8, 2015 at 6:07 12.7k 2 2 gold badges 31 31 silver badges 76 76 bronze badges

For my case, the status is same for last 15+ days? What could it mean? Like OP, it would be my first notification after initial submission.

Commented Sep 6, 2017 at 5:08

@Coder: When it comes to IEEE or Elsevier, 15 days is not a long time at all (unless you are communicating with journals that come under Letters). You could wait up to a month before thinking of sending a polite reminder. The acceptance for IEEE Signal Processing Letters did not take much time for me. I don't think it would take considerably longer for the Transactions on Signal Processing, either. This is because the Signal Processing Society (SPS) in IEEE has a strict schedule to follow.

Commented Sep 6, 2017 at 5:53

Yes, I should wait at least a month. This transaction is taken care by Computational intelligence society, which usually takes longer for everything.