All reviews received by SciRev

Motivation: During the process of my wait for a proper review for 16 months, I exchanged a number of emails with the Journals Editorial Office (JEO) Assistant. He had informed me that my emails were forwarded to the Journal Editors, but they had difficulty finding reviewers. I have not received one single email from the journal Editors. The reviews were in and the decision was pending in the 9th month, as the journal system indicated, but the Editors could not make up their minds for 7 months and I simply gave up hope. At the time of this process, Cheri J. Shapiro and Anne F. Farrell were the Editors-in-Chief.

I emailed Springer Nature to inquire about my rights as an author and ask about the proper way to express my formal complaints about the lengthy review process. I also added that I wished to retract my work and asked to be informed about the withdrawing process. That correspondence also took another 6 weeks until I received a proper email indicating that I "successfully" retracted my paper.

Editorial misconduct includes the inaction of the editorial agents in a timely manner. I did not see the reviewers' comments and the journal stole not only my time but also at least two other scholars.

Motivation: Initial checking and decision (immediate rejection or proceed external revision) of a manuscript needs 2 or 3 weeks, maybe because of quite a few manuscripts submitted to this journal. My another manuscript is now under review in this journal and has passed 75 days. Although editorial policy apparently shows that a reviewer is required to finish review in 2 weeks, I am not sure why such a long review duration is needed.

Motivation: The recommendation letter provided to us offered very little insight on how exactly the manuscript was inappropriate for this particular journal, considering similar studies have been published in it before. Thus, we were left more confused than edified by the experience. Additionally, the editor recommended publication in a journal that they manage; a journal that ranks quite poorly and not to the level of JAD. We were a tad offended by this and didn’t appreciate it.

However, we did appreciate that the journal took only a week to reject such that we would move onto another.

Motivation: The journal is fake journal figuratively. The editors do not bother to read the comments from their own journal Science. After 2 months and many communications ,they remember there is manuscript left in their folder and then, they copy-paste same email they have already sent to 99% of people. In fact, there is not much to say except ,the system is true dictatorships; no communication way is open nor any one will answer to your emails. This is true fake science journal which will publish the friends of editors- It is waste of time to bother nor in long-term really does matter - true science will stand after 40-70 years and does not need label or big names.

Motivation: Reviews were constructive and thorough. Resubmission to acceptance was very fast.

Motivation: Reviews were helpful. The whole submission process was smooth. The authors have the option to make the review history public. The data and code must be uploaded to a repository to make the results more transparent. Highly recommended publisher!

Motivation: The reviewers asked for additional comparative analysis. Total handling time is fast.

Motivation: The reviewers made up bunch of false and superficial comments and claims about the work that were not accurate to any degree or related to the work by any way. The reviewers seemed highly biased. Some of the rewievers comments also were obviously copy pasted from an another reviewer they have done as the content of these comments and the terminology used in the comments had no relation to our work.

Motivation: The review process took too much time relative to the simplicity of revisions being suggested. There was also a point where the Journal had to find a new editorial board member to handle our manuscript. The dates received, accepted and published appearing in the paper make it appear that the struggle to keep up with the peer review process was on us authors when, in fact, much of the covered period of time is mostly us waiting for the Journal to relay reviewer feedback and editorial decision.

Motivation: The journal timeline is a bit deceiving. They keep returning the manuscript back as "unsubmitted" so each time you revise and resubmit the submission date is a new date. That is why the average review time on the website is 10 days, otherwise, it takes several MONTHS which is not an issue at all. I mean, the goal is to have publications of high quality. But using a "trick" to the keep review time short put me off.

Motivation: Ver fast review, multiple reviewers (>2), easy system to handle the comments. Comments were helpful to improve the manuscript.

Motivation: The reviewers' reports were very helpful and improved the quality of my paper. But after two rounds of blind reviews (by 3 reviewers), the editor said they were not happy with the quality of the reviewers so they started reviewing my manuscript on their own again and again until I decided to withdraw as it was the opposite of the concept and philosophy of "blind peer review".

Motivation: Very fast decision. Although, the arguments given were rather weird as this was not the scope of the paper. Lack of novelty is also very strange as this was the first study ever for the specific topic.

Motivation: Our manuscript went through two rounds of peer review. After the second round, both anonymous reviewers suggested accepting the paper for publication. The editor, however, requested us to revise and resubmit for a 3rd round of peer review. We followed the instructions and resubmitted the paper after addressing his comments. After that, the editor went radio silent. He didn't bother to send the revised manuscript to external reviewers or respond to any of our emails. He did not even make an editorial decision. After months of waiting and not receiving a response, we ended up withdrawing the paper. Completely waste of time for the authors and reviewers. This is the most unprofessional and unethical behavior I've seen from any editorial team.

Motivation: The review process took an obscenely long time and resulted in rejection. It was not only a matter of difficulties in finding reviewers but the paper sat with the editor and administrators for 2-3 months at different points in the process. Many comments received may be helpful in improving the text for re-submission elsewhere. Others were outright rude or seemed to overlook the fact that the excessively long review process contributed to making our study outdated.

Motivation: Overall we had a good experience with this journal altough the editors were a bit slow.

Motivation: CrossRef check was applied to the whole manuscript (most probably including references) by journal staff and asked to revise the text after rejecting the paper three times which is quite strange and a waste of time (wasted more than two months). Software-generated similarity check report was requested multiple times by email but received no response. Poor handling and non-responsive Journal staff should be considered before submitting the paper to this journal.

Motivation: I really do not think that the editor (or the editorial board member) is doing his/her job. During the first round of the review, we got 2 excellent reviews and 1 highly critical review. The reviewer was definitely not qualified, she would not even know what a continuous variable is and she recommended papers which were not related to our paper at all. We cautioned the editor to read our responses to this reviewer carefully in a confidential note to the editor when we submitted the revised manuscript back to the journal. In the second round, we received 5 reviews (3 same from round 1 and 2 new reviewers). 2 of the initial reviewers liked the revisions (one of them had a not slight concern which was not scientific at all). The reviewer who created issues during the first round still objected the paper (she is highly unqualified). One of the two new reviewers liked the paper and the second one recommended a slight statistical change.

Summary:

I would never ever submit to this journal again... 5 reviews is a waste, especially given how hard it is to get reviewers nowadays and how unreliable reviews tend to be. Most of the five reviewers like the paper, and yet it’s still a rejection. The current world is one where you have to please five people to get an article accepted, meaning that controversial research has zero shot.