'Awaiting recommendation' on Scholar One before any review process
The status that authors see is fully customizable, and depends on the actual workflow employed by the journal. What you are seeing generally indicates that there is at least 1 review task pending, and also a recommendation task pending. This is possible! For instance, let's say the journal assigned 3 reviewers, but only requires 2 to move on to the recommendation task. Since they are both now &quot;pending&quot;, you could see both status's at the same time. Without specific information on the journal you are working with, I can't give you exact details on your situation. There are other possible scenario's.
Note: I am an employee of ScholarOne, but my posts and answers are strictly my own.