The Annals Review Process (amann-review-process)

When to trigger

You are deciding whether to start now or wait for the next deadline
You need to understand who reviews what, when, and how blinding changes between stages
You are planning a realistic timeline from proposal to published review
A coauthor assumes Annals works like a normal journal (it does not)

The two-step process is the defining feature

Annals does not accept full reviews cold. Intake is a gated, two-step process (检索于 2026-06；以官网为准):

Stage	What happens	Blinding & reviewers	Output
1. Proposal	Submit a ≤5-page proposal (four headings) at a deadline	Double-blind, reviewed by the Associate Editors	Invitation to develop the full review, or decline
2. Invited full review	Develop the ~50-page review with editorial guidance	Forgoes double-blind; read by the Associate Editor and Editor	Conditional acceptance / revisions / decline

The consequences are large: most of the gatekeeping happens at the lightweight proposal stage, and most of the development happens collaboratively with an editor who already endorsed the idea. This is closer to commissioning than to ordinary peer review — you are co-building an invited piece, not throwing a finished manuscript over the wall.