Latest review
First review round: 4.1 weeks. Overall rating: 4 (very good).
Outcome: Accepted.
Motivation:
This work was initially submitted to JACS and then to Chem Sci. In both cases, it was subjected to desk rejection. In the former, with a poor assessment by the Associate Editor and in the latter, the academic Editor did not bother to respond to a rebuttal. By contrast, Advanced Synthesis and Catalysis gave the work a fair assessment. The review process was robust, it was initially assessed by 4 reviewers (3 recommended minor revision and 1 recommended major revision). Due to the time needed for the revisions, the manuscript was withdrawn, revised, and resubmitted. A single review of the revised version was received and the work was published smoothly. As we suspected this work seems to have garnered quite a bit of attention, landing it in the top 10% of most downloaded articles in the Jan 2018-Dec 2019 time range. Overall, a reasonably satisfying experience. The one matter the Editors may wish to consider is the onerous job of formatting the manuscript in a template. I think they should request this once the manuscript is accepted (this becomes a major time consumption if the manuscript faces rejection from another venue as was the case here).
