Latest review
First review round: 8.7 weeks. Overall rating: 0 (very bad).
Outcome: Drawn back.
Motivation:
The review process looked normal to start with. Three reviewers gave constructive comments. However, the editor bolded the instruction in the email body that insisted us to use their language editing service, although no reviewer has requested it. This is not surprising as the cost of such a service is the same price to the open access fee.
The language editor does not seem to understand research, nor statistical method. The language editor changed the manuscript into a student’s thesis style. The language editing itself changed our precise description into a wording mess. Somehow, The language editor even changed our method and asked why we did not mention it early (of course not, because we did not use that method at all).
After we completed all reviewers' requests and added additional data, the editor personally requested additional data which were not requested in the first peer-reviewing round, and those data are only confirming the existing information using a different method. Such data do not add any scientific value, yet the editor insisted we repeating the whole study to provide these new data. It seems that he ignored the fact in our method that it takes 6 months to repeat the experiment involving animals. It is questionable whether this editor understands basic research. We did not want to respond to such an unethical request and then the manuscript was rejected.
After we checked out the wiki page for the editor-in-chief for this journal/publishing house (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demetrios_Spandidos#cite_note-:0-5), we decided not to appeal.
