I have never met such a situation you describe, as an author. On the other hand, I am an editor of one well-established journal. If some author complains with this issue, I would solve it personally by the "common sense" principle, not according to the "given rules".

Dear Dr.,

This is a very good question. In my experience, i would say it depends on the reviewer's comment and policy of the journal. However, once a review as been made, it is the prerogative of the editor to go through the reviewer's claim especially if the recommendation is tended towards rejection. In a nutshell, it is my opinion that authors can write to the handling editor if he/she feels the reviewers comments do not address the objective of the paper, so long as the journal policy isn't against it.

Thanks for this valuable information.

In my opinion, managing editors should surf through the reviewers comments before passing them into the authors. In my experience a reviewer claimed my manuscript is not appropriate for a journal without given a reason despite accepting the fact that all needed corrections were done. In this case the editor should have question the bases of such claim or should have deleted it from the reviewers comments.

Sometimes the editor cannot avoid reviewer's negative opinion on the submitted article. Although the editor is not forced to listen to the reviewer, s/he do it anyway, because the reviewer is someone with higher reputation. Once an editor apologized to me due to rejection of my article, saying that the reviewer is someone who shares the same research area with me, while he does not. And finally, the editor asked for opinion, how he could not listen? But, since I am an editor myself, I would be glad to hear from the author about the injustice. Maybe next time I might be able to avoid the reviewer...

Quite interesting topic..! I would say that journals should embrace the fundamental principles of their workings in the first place. The implication of this would be that whoever handles a submission (editor) should have an expert knowledge in that subject area and therefore becomes the best fit. This will consequently eliminate all forms of bias on the part of reviewers after all they have the discretion to accept/reject (in principle). Again, keep in mind that I would go for a journal that operates double blind review. This system eliminates bias, issues associated with authors demographic etc (on the part of reviewers only as editors will made a decision still). I won't be surprised if issues like this are perculiar with low ranked journals. Finally, to answer your question, some journals entertain complaints from authors who feel their papers got wrong claims (in this case 'unjust reviews') from the reviewers. The information on how to approach the issue is usually found in the journal's website. Best regards.

Very relevant and timely question.

I cannot but agree with the submissions above.

In my opinion, there is nothing wrong if you appropriately register your displeasure with/of reviewer comments you think is out of place. It could be that the reviewer actually may not have comprehensive knowledge of the particular field under consideration and that could result in the case you rightly stated "due to uncoordinated, lazy and incomplete review". It is also possible the review was done under pressure hence an ineffective review. By drawing the attention of the editor, I believe that will help him/her to avoid such pitfalls. Furthermore, the expertise of the editor of a journal is very key so as not to relinquish the ultimate decision making (rejection/acceptance) of a manuscript in the hands of reviewers only based on the laterr's comments only. Use the best approach per the journal's guidelines to seek redress not necessarily for a reconsideration of your paper but to avert future occurrence of same.

Thanks, Kwaku for this detailed review.

The editor relies so much on the reviewers' reports in such away that they do not care about whether the report contains wrong claims or not. Ordinarily, editors who handle manuscripts are supposed to be knowledgeable in the the area of study that the manuscript reflects. But what is the order of the day is that editors do not entertain authors' comments that lead to rejection and this situation is really pathetic.

It strongly depend on the journal that you are submitting your manuscript to, as far as i know some journal do double blind peer-review, papers are not rejected based on one reviewers opinion if 2 out of 3 reviewers reject the manuscript the editors read through their strong comments and go through your manuscript before taking final decision. I recently reviewed a paper and recommend the authors to add an analysis that will make the paper strong and show that the authors understand the mechanism of the research they carried out. Guess what the authors did, their reply is that the analysis is not the aim of their research. in a reputable SCI journal? Sometimes the reviewers are vast in the subject and knows reasons why the manuscript should be upgraded. Before sending your manuscript to a specific journal first download their already recently published articles go through it and understand what they want make sure your manuscript meets such standard too. i dont see need of reporting reviewers claim because the editors already decided not based on one reviewers wrong claim but more than one reviewer.

@ Dr Nyakno Jimmy; thanks a lot. However, I do believe editors of good journals do care, and thus do thoroughly scrutinize manuscripts alongside the reviewers' comments/claims in making (informed) decisions. I think a bad experience with any journal editor(s) should be highlighted for public awareness. Keep in mind that a proliferation of predatory journals/vanity press is a common knowledge.

Dear C. Ozoegwu ,

All Editors use Reviewers' comments in making decisions on manuscripts. In most cases, three and sometimes more Reviewers are engaged to review a manuscript depending on the extent of work done by some of them while the Editor serve as the Chief reviewer. All the reviewers, who usually work independently, cannot give the same erroneous judgements. So a misrepresented judgement by one Reviewer cannot be strong enough to influence the judgement of others including that of the handling Editor. There are many cases where an Editor goes against the recommendation of a Reviewer.

Although it is usually an unpleasant experience to have your manuscript rejected, the comments of the reviewers will mould the authors to become better author tomorrow. So I do not encourage authors to complain much about the final Editorial decision because the decision is usually a collective one. However, where the authors felt that they have strong grounds, they can complain but I have never seen a situation where such complaints change the earlier decision.

I hope that my response will be helpful to you.

Naturally, you can send your objection to the editors, but it often goes unnoticed.

Following

Dear

If the reviewer's feed back is not reflecting the contribution of a paper and the authors are sure about miss-understanding of the reviewer about some concepts, in this case authors should write to Editor.

Regards

Dear NE Williams

If 2 out of 3 reviewers are required to reject a paper and one of the rejecting reviewers is culpable to the issue raised in the questing, should the authors then write the editor.

Dear Chigbogu,

The handling editor sees more reasons with the reviewer than the author most cases if it is a very serious case it usually result in suspending the reviewer from the journal. But trust me this happens in rare cases. If your research is strong enough you can try to report but if you have a weak research your claim means nothing to the editor because the manuscript does not reach a publishable standard of the journal. Reviewers duty is not to condemn your work rather to make your work stronger. Most manuscripts are not strong but with ideas of the reviewers can help you work on it to standard.

Thank you

Undoubtedly yes. The outcome resulting from a polite complaint letter (or message) may be either positive or negative. Nevertheless, effort matters.

Regards

Really a good question

I do not hesitate to say that in many cases decision are made first and comments are made later. Associate editors just summarize the reviewers comments and take the decision. Irrelevant comments often remain unnoticed by the associate editors even in some good journals.

It is 100% true that the editor and even higher authority will decline your objection. The editor decision is hard-stone which cannot be changed even through the decision was made wrongly. Also, editor-in-chief (EiC) hardly bypass the associate editor recommendation. In case of the IEEE journals, the decision of EiC is final and no one can overturn it. This is a rule.

Please, don't waste your time and just move forward to submit your paper to another journal by terming unjustifiable decision as a "Bad-luck".

Most journals I review for ask authors to respond to each of the comments made by the reviewers. If you have solid grounds to disprove a comment made by the author, it's good to clarify. Reviewers are also humans and may make wrong judgements.

I see that some colleagues claim that the authors cannot do anything to change a final rejection of their paper by an editor. Based on my personal experience, this is not entirely true. There are editors who really do care and dare to reject a paper rejection by a reviewer/s, changing at the same time their final decision, if they are convinced that the author/s is right.

Dear Dickson Adom

Thanks for your kind submission but authors will only have the opportunity to respond to each of the comments made by the reviewers when the editors decide on "revision" rather than on "rejection"

Really a good question

This is a very good question

Honestly i feel that some reviewers and associate editors takes decision before even reviewing and presenting there comment on a paper based in most cases where the paper is coming from or pure wickedness especially high impact journals. In some cases the comments are outright ridiculous. I had a bizarre case with a journal with impact factor of over 8 points where there are 6 reviewers and out off the 6 reviewers 5 accepted the paper after second review but one rejected the paper from the first review and in rejecting the paper he said the paper is long and boring while also stating that he is not expert in that area. He never made a suggestion on what to remove from the paper. The most annoying thing is that, after replying him in detail on the third review, which was also sent to other reviewers, the other reviewers accepted our response but the third non expert reviewer still rejected the paper that it is boring. the next letter we saw was reject. Meanwhile this paper has stayed one year and three months with the journal. It was very bad experience. Well, we sent the paper to Another journal with impact points of about 5 and the paper was accepted within 3 months with minor review comments.

Quite a painful experience. Several of such experiences prompted me to initiate this discussion.

I have never met such a situation you describe, as an author. On the other hand, I am an editor of one well-established journal. If some author complains with this issue, I would solve it personally by the "common sense" principle, not according to the "given rules".

Dear Libor

Good to hear your comments as an editor. I hope authors would be bold enough to complain and perhaps receive some resolutions.

@Ndukwu m. C that is what you see in research, rejection from other journals doesnt mean that you should be discourage some journals know what they want and if it is not really the kind of manuscript they want move to another journal.

Your paper will be published and The reviewers will still read your paper in other journals and cite you in their work that is the funniest part of it. Rather than lingering and finding justice in a reviewers comment that is not meant to be so. Move forward because the more time wasted reduced your motivations in continuing other research. I want to tell you that you should not always look at impact factor but rather journal standard.....like elsevier, taylor and francis, springer, willey and other standard journals does not have much impact factors but their accepted papers are standard.

@NE Williams when the journal is in one of this platform you mentioned and you waited for a year and three months to receive a ridiculous rejection. it was a nasty experience

Yes, authors are ideally supposed to complain. However, the seen tradition is that the editors do not listen to the authors once manuscript has been rejected based on reviewers' comments.

Chigbogu Ozoegwu But, to judge according to your ideas might pose a problem many times since some editorial management systems do not allow you to make another decision but the rejection when all (some) of the review reports suggest to reject the manuscript. Unfortunatelly.

So unfortunate

Uche

Really strange equation!

@Ndukwu m. C that is why you need to check if a journal publishes monthly, semi-monthly, bimonthly, quarterly, annually or irregularly with this you can know the waiting time of your review period, never go for quarterl, annually or irregularly journal if really you need speed in your publication. These are major things to look at before sending your manuscript to any journal.....

I believe that encouraging authors to prove review comments wrong when necessary will provide editorial board with a new metric to grade their reviewers. Prizes for outstanding reviewers may no longer be based on only timeliness, proficiency, etc but also on accuracy/comprehensiveness of review and level of mentorship of authors.

Agreed absolutely. They don't go throughly through the paper and reject at once on the Desk and gives the reason that the paper is beyond the scope of their journal, though some of the papers have already been published with same main contents/topics/fields etc. Even sometimes they say to insert some of the references related to their journal too.

could be unfortunate!

Quite unfortunate... this is more common with regards to authors from developing countries.

How wish editors will be room for possible respond either when you feel dissastified with wrong review