All reviews received by SciRev

Motivation: Reviews very of good quality, but very slow review process. In addition, a minor revision was treated as resubmission and took almost 9 months again to be reviewed (was send out to a new reviewer although same referee and editor could have easily and much more efficiently checked it).

Motivation: The review process in the beginning at Nature Communications was acceptable, though the timeline was quite long, and we found the quality of reviewers to be mixed. Our manuscript was evaluated by four reviewers. Reviewers #1 and #2 were neutral, while Reviewers #3 and #4 provided positive feedback. After addressing their comments with new fitting data and additional experiments, Reviewer #1 and #4 accepted the manuscript, but Reviewers #2 and #3 raised concerns about certain fitting results. We responded thoroughly, and while Reviewer #2 was satisfied, Reviewer #3 remained unconvinced. Reviewer #3 appeared biased, as our XPS fitting method differed from his own work; he cited two of his publications, suggesting a lack of objectivity and a shift in stance from his initial positive feedback.

The editor ultimately decided to reject the paper, despite three reviewers being in favor. This decision felt imbalanced, as the editor leaned heavily on Reviewer #3’s opinion, discounting the other three reviewers. We filed an appeal, but unfortunately, it took two months to receive a response, and after almost a year in the review process, the novelty of our work risked becoming outdated.

Following the appeal, our manuscript went to external review. It took another month to secure a reviewer, who then submitted feedback on the same day they were assigned!!!. This new Reviewer #5’s comments were cursory, agreeing with Reviewer #3 and providing three points. Firstly, they compared our work with two previous studies, but the comparison lacked depth and misinterpreted both our manuscript and the prior work. Secondly, the reviewer was unable to distinguish between data with and without iR compensation, leading to unfounded claims of contradiction. Finally, they expressed doubts about our Raman spectra explanation, despite it being well-supported by references and additional experiments.
This experience was quite disappointing, leaving us disheartened by the apparent lack of expertise shown by both the editor and reviewers at the journal.
It’s possible that our lack of prior publications in Nature Communications may have influenced the fairness of the editor and reviewers in handling our submission.

Motivation: Based on the feedback received, the process was editorially vs. peer-driven, as all peer reviewers gave generally positive and encouraging assessments. The ultimate reason for rejection given was present from the first submission. Ethically speaking, if this was an issue for the journal, the manuscript should have been rejected in the first round instead of requesting we go through multiple rounds of review, telling us we did a good job, and then rejecting us. Now, our results are no longer timely, and we will have more difficulty publishing elsewhere.

Motivation: Both reviews were written by reviewers from a different field than our paper, which made mostly methodological comments, as a result these were mostly irrelevant. To show an analogy, it is like writing a paper on petrology, and getting reviews from a soil specialist. Awkward.

Motivation: rejected by autism ATT

Motivation: My experience with STOTEN was the worst journal interaction I have ever had. We chose STOTENT for several reasons, one being a reputation for fast handling. We submitted our manuscript, which was sent to review within 2 weeks. 4 months later we had heard nothing and status indicated 0 reviews completed. Several email inquiries got us no information. Eventually, after threatening to retract the paper, I was told they would find new reviewers. After 5 months, I inquired again, and was told they were still looking for reviewers. After 6 months I stated I would retract the paper if there was no decision. Finally, they stated after 6 months they had managed to obtain 1 reviewer report. The reviewer report was OK. The reviewer made 3 or 4 arguments/suggestions that I thought were important and very relevant for ensuring the quality of our paper. However, the reviewer made several other comments that made me question whether they had read the paper at all. The reviewer was clearly unfamiliar with the literature/methods related to our manuscript but they seemed to brush that to the side and said we used too many "unfamiliar" indices and that they weren't convinced by all this "new stuff." Overall the review was critical but it wasn't all that negative. However, the editor rejected our paper flat out with no chance for resubmission stating that our manuscript was not of sufficient interest for STOTEN and that it would be better fit for a topic specific journal. So, what aggravates me about this - the editor could have made that decision immediately without any reviews. They waited 6 months to obtain 1 review that said nothing about the novelty or fit of our manuscript for the journal and then decided to reject it on that basis. They literally wasted 6 months of our time. Both the handling editor and associate editor completely ignored us during review and clearly did not do their job. As an editor myself, I was really displeased with the quality of the editors. To state again, I could not be more dissatisfied with my experience here. I will not review for, or submit to, this journal again.

Motivation: One reviewer reviewed the work very highly (ranked it very high). Second reviewer wanted us to change our entire course of experimentation in a direction we had already shown within the work as unnecessary, and offered some meaningless other suggestions. This reviewer also asked for some results that were in the manuscript. Third reviewer said this is like other work in the literature, apparently without care or regard of what has been achieved. Two of the three reviews were absolutely third rate. But this seemed adequate for the "Editor" to reject. A detailed rebuttal was sent to the "Editor" but it was not considered seriously. Bad experience with this journal (just like with Angewandte Chemie International Edition).

Motivation: fast and high-quality journal

Motivation: No evidence that this article was actually peer-reviewed. It seems to be just accepted by the editors based on the most superficial of checks.

Motivation: The paper was a part of our PhD student thesis. It was translated by a professionnal translator and then edited by an Editage editor. Despite a plagiarism check by Editage showing minor similarities, the managing editor wrote that he identified too much similarities.
Therefore, make your best to reformulate similarities even if these are common expressions in your field.

Motivation: Clean desk reject, got one sentence of feedback how we might improve the manuscript.

Motivation: It took the journal more than 3 weeks to conduct the technical check.

Motivation: "...According to their views, your paper does not contain a sufficiently strong component of new applied physics. We believe your work would receive better visibility in a highly specialty journal in elsewhere."

Motivation: After almost 2 months, the Editor of the journal Mario Pianta stated that the work didn´t fit within the scope of the journal and nothing else. Does the editor need almost 2 months for such decision when there are many papers published in the journal dealing with similar topics?.
The editor suggested journal "Italian Economic Journal" (without any impact factor).

Motivation: The review by the editor was very kind in explaining that the paper was interesting but not a good fit for the journal and to save time was not sent out to reviewers.

Motivation: Fast desk rejection. The editor read the manuscript and gave positive feedback but said it was not well suited for the broad, international readership of MEPS. He also provided other journals that could be submitted.

Motivation: An Important Experience to Share!

My Paper Formatting Journey: I spent countless hours formatting my paper according to the journal's guidelines for a Special Issue. Despite the paper's alignment with the Special Issue's theme, it was immediately rejected after the deadline due to not being in the required double-column format. This was despite the author guidelines stating that papers should be written in a single-column format.

Journal's Specific Biases: This journal appears to have specific biases towards certain authors and subjects.

Important Tip: Ensure you understand these biases before investing time in submitting to this journal. If any journal asks to get in their format even on the first submission let us be careful