All reviews received by SciRev

Motivation: Typical desk rejection, suggested to submit to Nature Communications

Motivation: Manuscript was rejected without much of an explanation.

Motivation: Reviewers are humans and might be affected by cognitive biases when information overload comes into play. In fact, no amount of scientific training will completely mask the human impulses to partisanship. And the consequence is that authors may receive incorrect editorial decisions in their submissions to peer-reviewed journals. For instance, the journal editor issues a substantial revision when in fact a moderate one would suffice. This would be over-revision in peer review. In this situation, there exists a fraud cost if the journal editor tries to request the author to make a substantial revision when in fact a moderate one would be sufficient.

Thus, in our research paper, we identified a set of conditions under which the peer review process involves equilibrium fraud and over-revision. An equilibrium in peer review is efficient if the first peer-reviewed journal to which the author submits their research paper makes a truthful editorial decision, which the author accepts. When the fraud cost is sufficiently high, there exists an efficient equilibrium. Otherwise, when the fraud cost cannot sustain an efficient equilibrium, it may arise a specialization equilibrium in which the author first submits the manuscript to a top journal which makes a truthful editorial decision. This specialization equilibrium may explain why academic journals with higher quality standards more often attract authors who write articles of higher quality. Finally, when the fraud cost is not too large, we show that a new type of equilibrium emerges in our model, equilibria involving costly fraud, in which the first peer-reviewed journal to which the research paper is submitted always requests substantial revisions. If the review time and the probability of very serious concerns from reviewers were large, the author would prefer to send the research paper to one single peer-reviewed journal even if that would involve over-revision. In the fraud equilibrium the author's revision cost is high and independent of the true quality of the manuscript.

Therefore, in this paper drawing on Game Theory, we proposed a simple model with authors submitting manuscripts to peer-reviewed journals in order to investigate whether a competitive set of academic journals performs efficiently. We identified a set of conditions under which the peer review process involves equilibrium fraud and over-revision. To this aim we analyze Perfect Bayesian Equilibria when we assume the existence of top journals that only publish high-quality research.

To prove our results, in our submission we provided an appendix with four mathematical propositions including proofs.

Motivation: Since our paper was submitted during the holidays, the editorial decision was very quick.
Our paper combined mathematical modeling with biochemical in vitro experiments and answered a long standing question in the field. Based on our model predictions and in vitro experiments, we also proposed to explore a new therapeutic approach (in preclinical studies) for patients with a lethal genetic mutation. The editor clearly read and understood the paper and deemed it to be interesting, the concepts to be novel and the in vitro data convincing. However, the paper would not be suitable for Cell Systems because we did not provide IN VIVO data which confirm our predictions. Given clear novelty, medical relevance and the interdisciplinary in silico/in vitro approach, I find this threshold quite high for a systems biology journal - particularly during Covid-19 times, which made it impossible for us to conduct further in vivo studies (due to limited operating capacity of our) and the necessary in vivo experiments are not trivial. Would I have in vivo data, I probably would have submitted the paper even higher. I generally like the journal and would submit again, but it might be worth considering before submitting that your experimental data might not be enough if the data are "only" in vitro.

Motivation: The review process was fast and thorough. Reviewers' suggestions helped to improve the clarity of the paper. The editor agreed to a 3-week delay for submitting the revisions when I was on holidays.

Motivation: The manuscript was not sent for review for 4 months. The journal did not contact me to notify me of a delay, and I was not able to reach the editorial office for help of comments. The eventual reply was a generic response and still, no handling editor and no reviewers were appointed. A very dissapointing experience and a major loss of time.

Motivation: What is clear from my experience is that authors must be prepared to micromanage the review process with this journal and be very pro-active (reminder e-mails may not be sent to tardy reviewers unless the author makes inquiries). After 5 months from first submission, with no word from the editor, I asked for a status update. I was told they hadn't heard back from one reviewer and that a reminder e-mail would be sent to them. A month later I hadn't heard back yet and sent a follow-up message. I received my first response from reviewers just days later. Again, waited a long time (3 months) after second submission before asking for a status update and, again, received reviewer responses only days later, so my inquiry likely prompted action.

Motivation: Our article was reviewed by the editor-in-chief and he considered it to be better suited to a different journal. This could be considered reasonable since the topic was more closely related to the building engineering than to cities in general. The editor was very kind in his reply and he offered two alternative journals - one of them was a very good journal where the paper was eventually accepted.

Motivation: Review was fast and efficient. Reviews were knowledgeable and helpful

Motivation: It was relatively slow for the first round review, but it is understandable because of COVID-19. Also, editor responded to us promptly regarding the issue.

The review quality was good, and I appreciated that the editor had done a reasonable job. The first 2 reviews was positive but relatively brief. The editor could have strictly accepted but he instead found a 3rd reviewer, who had offered more constructive and detailed comments. This is fair to all authors who submitted their work to this journal, would allow the authors to learn from mistakes, and would ensure the quality of the journal.

Motivation: Highly efficient, timely, and constructive. And they communicated in a very empathetic way. Together, these aspects make the review process tolerable and easier to learn from. Impressive journal team.