Manuscripts submitted for publication are initially screened for their suitability to undergo peer review. Until recent the manuscripts are reviewed by two or rarely, by three reviewers, based on their reports, the editorial decisions are made.
Of late, I am witnessing frequently review of manuscripts by more than three evaluators, and at times, party to, reviewing of manuscripts as fifth, sixth or seventh reviewer!
Is this trend a welcome sign for the readers?
Whether the editors are not able to take decisions based on two or three reviewer evalauations
Or is it a strategy to REDUCE the number of acceptance of articles ?
Or any other factor?
Do
Thanks for your observation and question, Muthuvairavasamy Ramkumar. I have also experienced similar trends, being invited as fourth or fifth reviewer. In my view I think conflicting recommendations from reviewers are making the editors to sample more opinions from other reviewers. To uphold the integrity of peer review and enhance faster review process, reviewers should be honest to decline invitations that do not merge their expertise. I believe this will minimize the numbers of reviewers being invited for manuscripts, and also make more reliable recommendations available for editors to depend on, in decision making.
Honesty, integrity, faster, reliable- too high sounding but would it not tax the authors, to which, they dont deserve.
I am concerned about the authors. Does all these, reflect the "Quality" of editors and editorial decisions? Should the editors "pick" most suitable reviewer(s) in the first place to evaluate the manuscript(s).
Finding conflicting recommendations means, editor should exercise "editorial judgement", not merely go by the "conflicting" reviews. Being sent for seventh review in one case, against positive recommendation by both reviewers - Are they expose the chinks in the editorial armor ? Are they indicate the lack of level playing field ?
I am really concerned, not only as a reviewer, but also an author
I serve as reviewer for leading journals in Elsevier publication and other publishers. I hardly decline any invitation. Reviewing helps me to keep track of the current trend and research topics. 99% of invitations were from my exact research area. Leading journals keep a well maintained database of reviewers. The possibility of an article reviewed by an expert from another research field is remote.
Some leading journals send manuscripts to more than 3 reviewers. They experience an increase in submissions every year. But, the number of issues is not increased at the same rate of increased submissions. The percentage of accepted manuscripts is only 10-20% in those top journals. Hence, they look for a loop hole to reject a manuscript. This is my observation both as reviewer and author. If an editor of top journal finds a single negative comment from any one of the review reports, the manuscript is mostly rejected.
It is absolutely unnecessary to send manuscripts to more than 3 reviewers. Some reviewers tend to reject irrespective of the quality of the manuscript. Research perception highly varies from one reviewer to another geographically. Hence, if a manuscript is sent to 5 reviewers, at least one rejection can happen.
Couple of months ago, a manuscript came for review from a well reputed journal Materials and Design (IF 4.4, Elsevier). After submitting my review report, I checked other reviewer reports. I was shell shocked to see that 10 experts reviewed the manuscript. Please refer the attachment. There were 2 rejections. Now, it would be easy for the editor to dispose the manuscript.
Please refer a related question in Researchgate at the following link.
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Rejection_by_Editors
This clearly shows that the objective of review, as you rightly said, from the point of Editors it to REJECT the manuscript. We all come across many LEADING journals that boast of 90 or so % of manuscripts submitted to them are REJECTED.
One could not complain about publishing only the quality material in journals, but advertising the % of rejection as an indicator of Quality and scientific standing of a journal, to my view, is it not an indication of too much of negativity?
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Linguistics
- Philology
- Classical Philology
- Manuscripts