Latest review
First review round: 10.6 weeks. Overall rating: 3 (good).
Outcome: Accepted.
Motivation:
The process was time-consuming, taking 14 months from initial submission to publication. One reviewer suggested including an extensive area of literature that was not covered in the initial submission. This took 6 months amidst other responsibilities, and I wanted to do a thorough job of covering making these changes to facilitate acceptance. This reviewer was happy with these changes, but the second reviewer was unavailable and the paper went to a third reviewer who had other (but less extensive) suggested changes. While the end product is much better than the initial submission, there is a diminishing-returns relationship between time spent on a paper and its quality. Some journals seem happy with publishing papers that are 90% perfect, while Crop and Pasture Science and the reviewers it chooses seem to require 99% perfection. This is great for their readers, but their high bar may mean that some good results don't get published.
