Improve communication between authors and editors
I realize that sometimes there are time constraints which make it hard to stay on top of editorial responsibilities in addition to all of the other ones. Still, I'm opening this issue because I believe that communication between editors and authors could be improved in certain respects. I have submitted some papers to Scipost where the review process went very smoothly, but also one in which this has not been the case, at least so far.
I would like to suggest that the editors communicate with the authors more frequently concerning the status of the submission. For example, if more than (say) three months pass without any referees providing a report, it would be nice to send a message saying something like "sorry, we are still looking for referees, but we have asked a few knowledgeable ones, we hope they reply and give you a constructive report soon." Alternatively, if no such referees are found it might be helpful to ask the authors for help in finding/suggesting referees. Finally, when the status of the submission changes, it would be helpful for the editors to communicate this to the authors. In my case, I noticed at some point that the status of the submission changed to something involving a vote of the editorial college. We didn't receive any message from the editor about it, and had to ask around if anyone knows what this voting means. Now it looks like the voting is finished and the status is back to searching for referees/waiting for reports, but we still don't know what happened.
I'm not sure what the best way to address this issue would be. One possibility would be to formalize things, for instance by introducing some kind of standard policy: (1) if X days pass without any referee reports, inform authors about referee availability/ask for help, and (2) if any changes important enough to be listed in the submission page happen, send a message to the authors explaining what happened.