All reviews received by SciRev

Motivation: The initial review was pretty slow (took 3 months) but otherwise the manuscript was handled well. It has been much improved by now.

Motivation: Communication with the editorial office was quick and, to our surprise, a single revision was sufficient. In general, the review process helped to improve our manuscript and prevent possible misconceptions through marginal adjustments. However, the effort for the direct responses was substantial as the submission was evaluated by four reviewers, out of which one was clearly outside the research field and another one challenged every single claim and provided 17 major requests (despite rating our work as highly significant). Given this effort, we would have appreciated it if the final publication would have been accompanied by the peer review correspondence.

Motivation: Slow editorial process - the first decision had two reviewers' comments plus those from two editors, feedback was very helpful but was informed it would be a resubmission, not a revision. However next stage was much faster and even though classed major revisions were more or less editorial changes that again improved the manuscript. Overall I am happy with the revisions process and the editors and the outcome was a much-improved text, apart from that the decisions to first ask for a resubmission may be more to keep the rejection rate up and I thought the decision-making process could be faster as per the other comments here.

Motivation: Our manuscript spent nearly 6 weeks in limbo. I wrote to the managing editor at two and a half weeks and she told me that it was awaiting initial assessment from the editors. I wrote a week later, got no response, wrote after a month and then the managing editor forwarded my email to the scientific editor. I got no response from him, nor when I wrote to him again directly twice. This was a transfer from Science, where the paper had spent a month before being rejected and had been sent out to advisors, so had some assessment material with it that I had thought would make analysis faster.

Motivation: Desk rejection for being out of scope. However, the journal’s webpage and the Elsevier journal finder suggested otherwise.

Motivation: Desk rejection. Topic was not sufficiently broad for the journal.

Motivation: It's in our out at this journal. While I disagree with the justification provided, I do appreciate that there is some feedback from the editors.

Motivation: The editor was very supportive of our submission and we received several updates on the review process, including explanations regarding delays. Unfortunately, the requests received by one of the reviewers were severely biased. Nevertheless, the extensive revision, in general, allowed us to improve the manuscript significantly.
To our surprise, compared to other journals, the editorial requests concerning the preparation of the manuscript for publication were rather extensive, i.e. adjustments that had to be performed by the authors, especially considering the journal's high APC.

Motivation: While the end result was a rejection, the review process itself yielded three helpful reviews and did not take too long.

Motivation: The review process generally took long, especially for the second revision round (5 months). In that time I contacted the peer review coordinator multiple times, and suggested additional names for reviewers to expedite the process. When reviewers were finally in, a month elapsed before the editor finally made a decision. They rejected the manuscript a year and three months after first submission, based on characteristics that were inherent to the data, and known from the start (no control group, but this was not relevant for the research question), and on an issue with potential confounding that we immediately addressed (quick rerun of analysis with covariate, no change in conclusions).
The rejection was unexpected because one (repeat) reviewer recommended minor revisions, and the other (new) reviewer's comments expressed concern, but could be addressed without much trouble. We communicated our viewpoint to the editors, but they concluded the paper could contribute too little to the field, and the lack of control group was too problematic. Barring any feelings of frustration, this conclusion seems unjustifiable: they should have screened the manuscript more attentively at the first submission, or resubmission if they felt the study design was not sound. This late change of attitude makes it seems like they did not like the change to (mostly) null findings.

Motivation: The Editor -an established expert in the field- handled the manuscript promptly and very well, sending it to an intellectual giant in the field. The reviews were of very high quality and the comments straightforward to address.
It was a pleasure to have such a smooth and high-quality review process.

Motivation: Worst journal and editorial team. They rejected my manuscript after two month because they found similarity with another paper: the preprint version of the same manuscript at arxiv!!! They didn't realize this even though it was allowed in Guide For Authors.

Motivation: Four reviewers provided useful information, but one was quite abusive. The editor separately sent the additional negative review, which appeared to have access to personally identifiable information about one of the authors. This review also provided absolutely no content-based comments. When the senior author addressed this with the editor, the response was that they were under an ethical obligation to forward all reviews even if they were derogatory and personally attacked an author. We disagree with this statement, are concerned about the blinding procedures, and believe that this journal perpetuates a negative academic environment.