Hello,
Maybe someone with similar experience can give me some advice. I've recently received decision letter for my paper. It included two reviews. One was very general "Improve clarity of presentation and grammar + cite these few papers".
However the second one was strongly negative but included multiple factual errors. It seemed as if reviewer did not read it or did not understand what he/she had read. It for example stated that there are conceptual mistakes and gave an example of one, which was actually correct and proposed a change that was wrong. Also other general negative statements were given.
Does any one have experience with such situations? Should I try to start a discussion with editors? Should I let them know that they have an unreliable reviewer?
I'd be very grateful for any insight.
We received a similar review. It was unjust and aimed at us personally, whereas the second one was quite positive. Though it was anonymous, we thought to recognize the authors and their motives. We reacted by submitting our arguments calmly to the editor-in-chief. We did not go public. We thought to approach the publisher but we dropped the idea.The editor stuck to his refusal. We rewrote our contribution and presented it to another journal. It was published online and in print in short delays without problems. There were a lot of positive reactions and some helpful suggestions by reviewers who behaved most fairly. Such an experience as the first one normally hurts. How I would behave: consider critics seriously and recheck your argumentation, try to react as less emotionally as possible; react briefly and not dramatically; but do not lose your time with a fight which does not bring any benefit to you. Remember the important matter is not to make the world perfect, but to cope with difficulties in an imperfect world.
Yes, I have had a situation in which one of my PhD students got a very negative and unjust review by one of the reviewers of a journal. I started to communicate with the editor about that but it did not help. I even threatened to file this as a (legal) case, but did not get an answer. Being afraid for all the work that would imply I did refrain from that. But you should definitely react and explain you position in a rebuttal letter. If that does not help, and you are still convinced about your case, you can always ask advise from your librarian. You can also publish the facts, including the review, on the social media, mentioning the name of the journal and the editor. But be contructive, and follow rules of non-violent communication.
We received a similar review. It was unjust and aimed at us personally, whereas the second one was quite positive. Though it was anonymous, we thought to recognize the authors and their motives. We reacted by submitting our arguments calmly to the editor-in-chief. We did not go public. We thought to approach the publisher but we dropped the idea.The editor stuck to his refusal. We rewrote our contribution and presented it to another journal. It was published online and in print in short delays without problems. There were a lot of positive reactions and some helpful suggestions by reviewers who behaved most fairly. Such an experience as the first one normally hurts. How I would behave: consider critics seriously and recheck your argumentation, try to react as less emotionally as possible; react briefly and not dramatically; but do not lose your time with a fight which does not bring any benefit to you. Remember the important matter is not to make the world perfect, but to cope with difficulties in an imperfect world.
You can ask if the journal has an appeal process. Many do and some don't. Sometimes when you raise concerns, editors will send out the article for an additional review.
Jerzy,
if the reviewer made factual errors in his/her review of your paper, I'd send a rebuttal to the editor and point these out as clearly as possible. Also, maybe the editor obliges you if you ask for a different reviewer. If all this fails, you probably need to consider another publication source.
As some of the others on this thread have stated, your experience is far from unique. I once saw a review that left me wondering whether the reviewer had actually reviewed someone else's paper. I copied out the most blatant misrepresentations and sent them to the editor, who was gracious enough to acknowledge the faulty review and swapped out the reviewer. Still, I could have spent my time more usefully than writing what turned out to be a paragraph-by-paragraph rejection of the review of my paper.
Worse perhaps is the impact negligent reviews have in grant proposals - have see that too. For as much as peer-review is held up as a standard-setting mechanism in academia, I think it has enough flaws (or potential for flaws) to require more circumspection and oversight on the part of editors and grant agencies.
As an ex editor of a leading journal I have plenty experience of this. Sometimes authors won't accept any form of critical comment from a reviewer. Sometimes reviewers provide very poor and at times faulty reviews. A good editor would have read the paper and come to some initial conclusions before sending the paper out to review. A balanced decision would then be made on the basis of the reviews and whether they are fair. If an author feels that a reviewer has based their comments on a flawed undertanding of issues, then, yes, they should write to the editor and clearly outline the issues. This should be based on clear fact. One problem is that there is often a pretty grey area about interpretation of some positions. Where an author writes to an editor, the complaint should be considered seriously and others' views sought, unless it is clear the author is just motivated by disappointment at being rejected. In my experience I woudl typically ask another editor or two editors to review the paper, the reviews and the authors' complaints. In some cases, this meant we sent the paper back out to another reviewer. In many cases it meant upholding the original decision. A poor response from a journal would just be the trademark 'decision is final'.
I am very grateful for all the advice and encouraging words. I have submitted a respectful and calm rebuttal to the reviewer arguments. The editorial committee reacted swiftly and gave me a chance to revise my work and resubmit. From what I've read here it is more than a positive outcome.
@ Jerzy: your last post sounded rather good, hope you made it, wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Charles
Paper rejected because of unreliable review - what to do?
Personally I'd experienced what you'd experienced numerous times. I think it is up to the editor what should be the next step e.g. some editors will take a decision to reject the entire paper or most of the times s/he will ask author to rectify the issues as asked by the reviewers or sometimes asked the author to provide answers / clarifications based on the negative comments / claims by the reviewers.
It is very normal for different reviewers to have different opinions on the quality of a particular manuscript due to the blind review process as well as different experience / expertise of various reviewers. I know it can be a big slap on the face of an author based on some of the illogical / non-factual negative critiques. I think this is the bitter pill that every researcher / author need to go through & go through victoriously by self examining how to improve your research & academic writing skills (after you read through the negative critiques, take a break & don't rush through to improve the manuscript as you might be demotivated).
Normally I do this after a reasonable break - among all the negative critiques before me, I will do my best to improve the manuscript i.e. take the negative critiques positively (this is the best you can do to counter the negative critiques). For those illogical negative critiques, I will clarify to the editor (if this is allowed) or ignore them (but ensuring I don't repeat such injustice as a reviewer to future authors). For those manuscripts rejected by editors, I will improve them before resubmit to other journal(s). If you are persistent enough, eventually you will find a journal editor & reviewers to accept your paper. Wishing you all the best.
Good to know that the editor considered you complaint. Best wishes with your resubmission.
Hello, as an editor, I would advise you to tell the editor of the journal about what happened and why you think the review was not fair. If you have proofs that a review is filled with errors, the editor should know and should act accordingly (publication ethics).
As an author, it happened to me countless times to have my papers rejected for sometime strange reasons. What I have always done is to improve the quality of my manuscripts and to submit them again somewhere else. Why waste our time trying to publish in a journal if we believe the review process is biased and unprofessional (and sometimes just mean)?
Good luck to you.
I had this experience recently - it was obvious that one of the reviewer selected did not understand at least two major aspects of my paper. The other reviewer suggested "minor revision", for what it's worth. This was in a fairly prestigious journal in my field (no names) and the editor said "please do not resubmit" in the decision letter.
I just said it wasn't worth pursuing since there are a dozen or more journals which are relevant to the topic and the paper is not urgent for me - and I have it time-stamped from that journal if anyone tries to swipe the idea before my next steps. I'll revise it using the reviewer comments that make sense and resubmit it elsewhere.
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