All reviews received by SciRev

Motivation: It took one month just for the paper to be assigned to an editor. Then, three and a half months later, we receive the rejection notice with just two very scant reviews that evidenced very little effort from the reviewers, some of whose comments actually contradict factual data in the paper. Either we presented the paper very badly or they did not bother reading it thoroughly.

Motivation: The reviewer did not make any attempt to review the scientific argument in the paper but simply went on to find fault with the terminology used and express his/her opinion about how it was not possible to understand the paper. The review was simply about authors being unclear about the underlying models, being confused about key statistical concepts followed by a tutorial on the reviewers thoughts about the terminology used in statistics. There was no attempt made to objectively assess the proposal in the paper or to demonstrate if it works or not. There was no consideration at all of our methods or any specific pointer to the validity of our findings - two pages filled with non-specific opinions that could very well address any paper at Statistics in Medicine. The editors simply served as gate keepers for the reviewers. I would avoid this journal if you are presenting new methods and are not a famous personality.

Motivation: After more than 5 months, we received the following e-mail:

"I am writing with reference to manuscript XXXXXX titled "Automatic ...." Please allow me to clarify that your manuscript was sent to a large number of editors and, up till now, we have not received any evaluation reports on it, which may indicate a lack of interest from the editors' side regarding the topic
of your manuscript. Thus, unfortunately, we will not be able to consider your manuscript in the journal."

So, after 22 weeks, they decided that the manuscript was not of interest for this journal. Serious journals make this kind of decisions in 1-2 weeks.

Motivation: The Associate editor said "whilst there is some interest in how this work has been done, the three reviewers had varying views but on overall the feeling was 1. the work would not change the overall view of this area given recent FDA pronoucements and 2. that the statistical aspects were potential problematic in places. Overall, taking all things into consideration, the paper would not be currently competitive against other papers submitted to the journal."

We believe that when reviewers flag methodological concerns it is a concerning if editors make the inference that there are potentially problematic statistical issues without feedback from the authors - reviewers may not necessarily be as well versed in the methods as the authors and thus this situation reflects editors simply acting as gate keepers.

Motivation: The reviewer comments were thorough, to the point and useful. Communication was polite and clear.

Motivation: The whole process took a lot of effort and was very unclear. At first the manuscript appeared to be accepted, however after we chose not to pay for an English language check by a firm suggested by them and had it done by our own universities language center, the manuscript was rejected. The reason why the manuscript was rejected remained unclear. We attempted a complaint with someone listed as chief editor but never got a response.

Motivation: Reviews were constructive and polite, however somewhat general and motivated from the reviewers personal view on the topic.

Motivation: PLOS Medicine has a special "presubmission inquiry" process. You can send in your abstract to this process and within 3 days you will receive an advise on whether to send in your whole manuscript for a longer review process or whether to send it to a different journal.

Motivation: Very swift turnaround, professional behavior of the editor, and useful cmments provided by the reviewers.

Motivation: Very rapid turnaround. The article was a controversial one, and I expected at least one hostile reviewer to respond to, but the editors were very fair in sending it to reviewers who would be objective.

Motivation: Associate editor had read the manuscript and the persons name was given in the decision.

Motivation: It seems they had problems finding reviewers, hence the long first round. Otherwise they were rather fast and the paper appeared online after a month; with page number.

Motivation: It took forever.

Motivation: After I submitted the paper I sent more than 10 emails to understand what is going on. none of my emails was replied. I withdrew the article after one year of my submission. 6 months later I took an email from the editor which says the paper was accepted with minor revisions. this was the worse submission process ever.