Latest review
First review round: 10.6 weeks. Overall rating: 0 (very bad).
Outcome: Rejected.
Motivation:
My experience with the peer-review process was very poor, despite the process initially appearing relatively efficient. The manuscript received two diametrically opposed reports. Reviewer A described the argument as unclear and stated that “No revisions will save the article,” but provided none of the numbered major revisions or page/line references requested by the journal's review form, nor any minor revisions. Reviewer B, by contrast, gave a substantive account of the manuscript's argument, stated that the thesis was successfully demonstrated, described the work as “ground-breaking,” recommended that it “be published as is,” and explicitly indicated that neither major nor minor revisions were required.
Despite these contradictory recommendations, the editorial decision stated that “the reviewers recommend significant revisions” and required an itemised, point-by-point response explaining the changes made. Since neither reviewer had actually recommended significant revisions—one recommended no revision and the other stated that revision could not save the manuscript—I resubmitted the manuscript unchanged with a detailed response explaining the difficulty. I explicitly welcomed substantive and actionable criticism and asked the editor either to identify what revisions were required, adjudicate between the contradictory reports, or obtain another assessment. I also made clear that I would respect rejection if the editor considered the negative review decisive. The manuscript was then rejected without substantive explanation.
I subsequently raised a procedural query with the publishers of the journal, expressly stating that I was not appealing the rejection. The editor then disclosed that he had himself recognised that the reviews were contradictory and had appointed a third reviewer specifically to help determine whether the negative review had merit. That reviewer accepted the assignment but failed to submit a report after more than four weeks, after which the editor proceeded without it. The editor explained that he gave particular weight to the negative reviewer because he considered that reviewer a leading Belhar scholar and believed I could improve the manuscript's “clarity” and “logic.”
The editor also characterised my resubmission as failing to engage meaningfully with the review and stated that I had provided no substantive rationale for why the article should be accepted despite the concerns raised. I found this particularly problematic because I had not requested acceptance: my response expressly identified rejection as a legitimate outcome and asked for editorial adjudication because the reports provided no coherent programme of revision.
After I pursued the procedural concern with the publisher, they acknowledged that my complaint concerned the process rather than the academic decision, but concluded that interpretation of reviewer reports, revision requirements and assessment of an author's response fell within the Editor-in-Chief's discretion. The publisher characterised the matter as involving “differences in interpretation,” found no breach warranting publisher intervention, and closed the matter.
My dissatisfaction is therefore not that the manuscript was rejected or that one reviewer disliked it. Negative peer review is an ordinary part of academic publishing. My concern is that two plainly contradictory recommendations were represented to me as “the reviewers recommend significant revisions”; I was instructed to provide a point-by-point account of revisions that neither reviewer had requested; and when I asked the editor to adjudicate that contradiction rather than invent revisions myself, the manuscript was rejected. The editor subsequently confirmed that he had recognised the contradiction from the outset strongly enough to seek a third opinion.
The experience substantially undermined my confidence in the journal's editorial process and, subsequently, in AOSIS's oversight of that process. I would not submit to this journal again.
