Latest review
First review round: 26.0 weeks. Overall rating: 2 (moderate).
Outcome: Rejected.
Motivation:
The editor based their decision (almost) exclusively on the negative report of one reviewer, ignoring the positive reports of two other reviewers. The decision letter almost only emphasizes the negative aspects contained in the referee reports, to the point of giving a biased interpretation of what is stated in the (positive) reports. For completeness, the manuscript was sent to a fourth reviewer who advocated for an immediate rejection due to plagiarism, since a previous version of the manuscript was available as a working paper (of course, my co-author and I had written the working paper version as well). The editor stated they did not consider this report to make the final decision, which probably contributed to the rather long review process since they had to find additional reviewers.
