Journal title
Dur. 1st rev. rnd
Tot. handling time
Imm. rejection time
Num. rev. reports
Report quality
Overall rating
Outcome
Motivation:
If the editor does not listen to reviewers' recommendation, why waste time and energy to have the paper reviewed?
Motivation:
This manuscript took a long time to get accepted. It was basically put on hold due to one reviewer keeping on questioning some aspects of the paper due to lack of understanding. The editor-in-chief finally took over and suggested us to make some last changes before accepting the article. I appreciated the attitude of the editor-in-chief in not blindly relying on one negative reviewer. He went through the manuscript himself and took a decision. Although I am very satisfied with the editor-in-chief, the whole process turned out to be way too lenghty.
Motivation:
Fast (from first submission to article online in a little over 2 months).
Motivation:
Dear F1000 Research Team,
First, I would like to thank all of you who worked so dilligently on our manuscript, which was "accepted" in December 2014 and after 34 referee referrals remains in "peer review purgatory" and unlisted on PubMed. Had we understood the peer review nightmare that this process would entail, my coauthors and I would never have submitted our study to your journal. As it is, I would like to offer a post-mortem for this process in the hope that you will change it.
At its best, peer review offers three main benefits. First, it allows investigators to improve on their reports based on the insight of objective referees. Second, it provides independent evaluation of the scientific work that is reviewed. And third, it gives journal editors the discretion to judge that work according to the validity of the reviews.
F1000 Research uses an open peer review process designed to be uniform, transparent and theoretically unbiased. Referees should have "sufficient experience and expertise, be impartial and active in the field, and not have collaborated with the main authors in the past three years." Furthermore, there is no editorial oversight of the peer review process: No editor holds referees accountable for their reviews or judges the validity of those reviews. To put it bluntly, nobody is in charge of the peer review process.
All of this works very nicely with a non-controversial scientific topic. Unfortunately, your system fails miserably with a polemic subject like the one in our article (sexual transmission of Lyme disease). First, referees are chosen based on a system that excludes positive reviewers who have worked with the authors, leaving less qualified and/or oppositional referees to make scientifically unsound and/or politically motivated judgments of the article. Since there is no accountability on the part of the referees, these judgments cannot be negated or overcome by editing the manuscript and refuting the review. Second, since all opinions (including reader comments) are freely available on the journal website, independent review of the article goes out the window, and referees become reluctant to "buck the trend" of negative reviews. Third, since there is no editorial oversight of the peer review process, invalid reviews maintain their effect even after they are refuted, and the chance of obtaining a positive review becomes virtually nil. And finally, since the article has been "published" online, it cannot be withdrawn and submitted to another journal that would perform valid independent peer review and get it listed on PubMed.
Although I am sure that your open peer review system had good intentions, the nightmare that we have endured with this perverted system is frankly worse than any experience in all my years of publishing scientific articles. I would certainly not encourage my peers to submit a manuscript to your journal unless this broken system is fixed. I hope that you will accept this criticism in the positive spirit that was intended and change the system.
First, I would like to thank all of you who worked so dilligently on our manuscript, which was "accepted" in December 2014 and after 34 referee referrals remains in "peer review purgatory" and unlisted on PubMed. Had we understood the peer review nightmare that this process would entail, my coauthors and I would never have submitted our study to your journal. As it is, I would like to offer a post-mortem for this process in the hope that you will change it.
At its best, peer review offers three main benefits. First, it allows investigators to improve on their reports based on the insight of objective referees. Second, it provides independent evaluation of the scientific work that is reviewed. And third, it gives journal editors the discretion to judge that work according to the validity of the reviews.
F1000 Research uses an open peer review process designed to be uniform, transparent and theoretically unbiased. Referees should have "sufficient experience and expertise, be impartial and active in the field, and not have collaborated with the main authors in the past three years." Furthermore, there is no editorial oversight of the peer review process: No editor holds referees accountable for their reviews or judges the validity of those reviews. To put it bluntly, nobody is in charge of the peer review process.
All of this works very nicely with a non-controversial scientific topic. Unfortunately, your system fails miserably with a polemic subject like the one in our article (sexual transmission of Lyme disease). First, referees are chosen based on a system that excludes positive reviewers who have worked with the authors, leaving less qualified and/or oppositional referees to make scientifically unsound and/or politically motivated judgments of the article. Since there is no accountability on the part of the referees, these judgments cannot be negated or overcome by editing the manuscript and refuting the review. Second, since all opinions (including reader comments) are freely available on the journal website, independent review of the article goes out the window, and referees become reluctant to "buck the trend" of negative reviews. Third, since there is no editorial oversight of the peer review process, invalid reviews maintain their effect even after they are refuted, and the chance of obtaining a positive review becomes virtually nil. And finally, since the article has been "published" online, it cannot be withdrawn and submitted to another journal that would perform valid independent peer review and get it listed on PubMed.
Although I am sure that your open peer review system had good intentions, the nightmare that we have endured with this perverted system is frankly worse than any experience in all my years of publishing scientific articles. I would certainly not encourage my peers to submit a manuscript to your journal unless this broken system is fixed. I hope that you will accept this criticism in the positive spirit that was intended and change the system.
Motivation:
This was a very fast procedure. The editor was very prompt and helpful and the reviewers were constructive. The required changes were minor and I like the fact that the editor was able to quickly make a decision to accept the manuscript. I will definitely submit to this journal again!
Motivation:
After 12 weeks I contacted the editor to check on the manuscript's progress. Received immediate answer from the editor and 2 weeks after I had the first review.
There were only two reviewers, and both referees had very good comments, although one referee was not very polite.
One week after was accepted.
There were only two reviewers, and both referees had very good comments, although one referee was not very polite.
One week after was accepted.
Motivation:
Clean, speedy, rigorous review process. Tough but fair. Most of the comments from the reviewers contributed to enhance the quality of the manuscript. Great follow up by the associate editor. Overall a good experience.
Motivation:
Quick, but one of the reviewers was clearly not an expert on the topic.
Motivation:
The editor should have outlined concerns that had to be addressed early on and determined the feasibility of our performing those experiments in a timely manner. One of the reviewers had persistent (and often unreasonable) concerns that the editor neither discounted nor supported, thus leading us on a 2 year saga.
Motivation:
The editor immediately rejected the manuscript arguing it was a poor fit. Given the fast decision, I highly doubt whether sufficient efforts were invested in checking out the rich content of the manuscript, and I suspect the decision to be based on the title and abstract only. No arguments were provided as to why the manuscript was a poor fit. I found this very disappointing.
Motivation:
No information received during the first six months after the submission, until the message, following my request, that the handling editor was having problems to secure a second reviewer, but that, given the long time elapsed, the EiC had asked him to proceed with what he had presently. Then, no news until about ten months since the submission, when, after my new request, I was informed that all the due reviews were already with the handling editor and a decision could be expected soon. Then, no news for two more months, when the paper was rejected with no possibility to reply in spite of a quite negative and a quite positive evaluation by two different reviewers, none of whom explicitly denying the possibility to revise it since none of their concerns required new analyses and data to be addressed. Actually, most of the negative comments had to do with the apparent lack of clarity of some parts of the manuscript rather than structural/methodological problems of the study. No further reply to my new message expressing my obvious disappointment by how the whole procedure was carried out.
Motivation:
Review of the manuscript was handled professionally. The editor summarized the reviewers' comments into 7 experiments/concerns that were to be addressed. This made our work a lot easier, and clarified the goals.
Motivation:
The requirements for the journal to even send our paper out for review were too stringent. The number of experiments, all in vivo, that they requested to consider a future resubmission would have doubled the amount of data in the paper. We did not consider all the requested experiments to be critical for the story we were presenting.
Motivation:
While the editor and reviewers requested several experiments in the first round of revision, the requirements were clear. Once we met those requirements, the editor accepted the manuscript.
Motivation:
The only criticism for the way the manuscript was handled, is that initial review took a long time, but this was likely due to the time of year (holiday season). The reviewers' concerns were valid, and appropriate. This was a direct submission, and the review process improved the manuscript.
Motivation:
The process was very fast, professional and direct.
Motivation:
The submission interface is easy to follow, the editor was rapid in dealing with the manuscript. I did not have any issues with the process and will look into submitting more papers to this journal in the future.
4.4 weeks
4.6 weeks
n/a
2 reports
Accepted
Motivation:
professional and efficient review process
Motivation:
The submission system is very author-friendly, and the rejection at least was fast and (nearly) painless.
Motivation:
Overall the review process was very efficient and helpful. The editor also offered guidance on which were the most pressing points to address in the revision which was helpful.
Motivation:
On the website, Social Forces mentions its commitment to speedy review several times. The website clearly says that administrative processing takes one business day - we found that it took seven. And where the journal says repeatedly that they respect authors time and will make speedy decisions to desk reject, we heard nothing for three weeks, even though we sent a polite follow up email. We subsequently decided to withdraw the paper. Perhaps the process is not slow overall, but for a journal that makes many claims about being speedy, over three weeks to not even know whether the paper would be peer reviewed seems like a lot.
n/a
n/a
17 days
n/a
n/a
n/a
Rejected (im.)
Motivation:
It was rejected and they suggested it would be better fit in their other journal (eg. The Annals of the American Thoracic Society).
Motivation:
They publish your work in both Spanish and English. They give great feedback during the submission process.
Motivation:
Name of reviewers, dates, marked corrections are all published along with your article on their website.
8.7 weeks
32.4 weeks
n/a
3 reports
Accepted
Motivation:
I think that the former and the current EIC's are excellent. The problem is that some reviewers of this journal are not hat I would call "top-notch" in terms of awareness to novelty in the field. But overall, I view this journal very highly after 3 papers there and I will definitely continue publishing there
Motivation:
Unfortunately no explanation for decision - and this after over a month of waiting.
12.6 weeks
12.6 weeks
n/a
1 reports
Rejected
Motivation:
The review process took a lot of time. It took 2.5 months before they could find a reviewer. I would have appreciated it, if they had sent a short e-mail explaining why the review process took so long. Howevery, the editorial officer replied quikcly after my inquiry about the delay. This, as well as the apologies for the delay mentioned in the final decision, was much appreciated.
Although the reviewer's comment was positive with some remarks, I still was a little disappointed: He/she explained that a certain outcome of the study would have been more interesting for the jounal's readers. I was surprised to read this, as the outcome which the reviewer was referring to, was actually the main outcome of the study. It appeared the reviewer had not thoroughly read the manuscript.
Although the reviewer's comment was positive with some remarks, I still was a little disappointed: He/she explained that a certain outcome of the study would have been more interesting for the jounal's readers. I was surprised to read this, as the outcome which the reviewer was referring to, was actually the main outcome of the study. It appeared the reviewer had not thoroughly read the manuscript.
Motivation:
Although the review process took quite some time, I was still satisfied with how the manuscript was handeled. I received two reviewer comments as well as an editorial comment which in my opinion, were helpful for improving my manuscript. You could sense that the reviewers thoroughly read the manuscript as the minor revisions encompassed not only the lay-out but also, for example, some critical comments regarding the methodology.
Much appreciated was the postponement of the resubmission deadline due to a holiday of the first author.
Much appreciated was the postponement of the resubmission deadline due to a holiday of the first author.
Motivation:
Two reviewers split, a third was brought in. In essence, the third reviewer didn't like the methods used in a small part of the paper because he believed - dogmatically - that his own were the only way to go.
Motivation:
Reviews deeply split. Editor acted quickly
47.7 weeks
73.8 weeks
n/a
2 reports
Accepted
Motivation:
It is long time from submit to accept.