Revison due date "by"?
In my experience with academics, many of us will do things by the absolutely last moment. No person that knows what they are doing would set a deadline of &quot;by January 11th&quot; and expect everything to be done at January 11th 00:01.
When it comes to &quot;deadlines&quot; for submitting revised versions of journal articles (non special issue) are there predominately to avoid the case where authors just always prioritize something else and never get it done. The editorial systems I have worked with from the editor perspective would just auto-fill those in a few months time. But there is no real point for the editor to enforce those - it means that the work they've put in the refereeing process is for naught.