Demystifying the journal review process

Demystifying the Journal Review Process: An Editor’s Observations (YouTube, 2m 38s)

Introduction

This is my fifth year as the co-editor-in-chief of a leading international journal in my field of research: Annals of Tourism Research. Editing a journal has been a truly eye-opening experience; it has triggered so many fundamental questions about publishing and academic research more broadly and made me realize that the manuscript review process remains flawed and intransparent. The flaws of the journal review process have been well understood from the early beginnings of scholarly publishing and continue to be hotly debated to this day [1,2,3]. Most of these flaws cannot easily be fixed because they are caused by humans running the process, not algorithms. The fact that the journal review process remains largely intransparent to authors, however, is not as easily explained. There is no need for it to be intransparent and clouded by myth. Procedural intransparency does not protect procedural integrity. Rather, it creates a fertile ground for the development of misconceptions and myths, which – in turn – fuel conspiracy theories and publishing paranoia. Motivated by the desire to increase transparency in scholarly publishing, I started posting my observations about the manuscript review process on Twitter (#editorobservation, @SaraDolnicar). In this article I try to distill these observations and extract reoccurring themes around seven common myths (Figure 1).

Please note that this is not a scholarly piece of research. I cannot make statements about the prevalence of each of the myths I discuss, and many other myths exist that are not discussed in this article. The basis of the article are my personal observations as a journal editor of five years and as a mentor of many early career researchers over the past two decades.

Figure 1. Some of the myths surrounding academic publishing

Myth 1 – “Editors want to reject manuscripts”

One of the first things I was told when I started serving as a journal editor by my publisher was that the purpose of journals is to publish, not to reject manuscripts. Most publishers use the number of articles published per year as a performance indicator for journal editors. I was unaware of this, assuming instead that the entire publishing system was geared towards disseminating research of the highest quality, implying that the role of editors is to protects the journal from publishing work of low quality. As a result, when taking on the editor role, I expected to become a guardian of research standards. I expected to find myself defending with my life the high quality of work published in Annals of Tourism Research. I expected to become a desk-rejection machine. Very soon I realized that a guardian was not needed because the scholarly review system is so inherently conservative and geared towards rejection. Reviewers feel that it is their responsibility to articulate arguments that justify the rejection of manuscripts [1]. Not surprisingly, therefore, the ratio of negative to positive comments by reviewers is five to one [4].

Why are reviewers so negative? Why do they seem to put so much effort into preventing their colleagues from getting their work published? Some argue that this behavior is a result of the academic culture reviewers were raised in, stating persecution mentality [5,6] and a climate of abuse [5,7] as contributing factors. My personal observation is that reviewers perceive the review process as an opportunity to position themselves as outstanding scholars by being hyper-critical, especially early career reviewers. Scholars toward the ends of their careers seem to mellow somewhat. Another possible explanation for the tendency of reviewers to find flaws and recommend rejection may be that recommending the acceptance of a potentially flawed paper could be embarrassing for the reviewer. As a result, out of an abundance of caution to protect their reputation, reviewers may choose to reject when in doubt.

Whichever the reasons may be, as I started handling the first manuscripts as a journal editor, I perceived the review process as unnecessarily critical; dangerously critical, in fact. I felt that, by default, manuscripts were more likely to get rejected than accepted, making it particularly difficult for articles that do not follow an established and familiar pattern of investigation and presentation to survive the review process. This means that the most original, unusual articles faced the biggest challenges and had the highest changes of getting rejected. What a loss.

As a result of these early experiences, my role quickly shifted from guardian to gem-hunter. I found myself – and continue to find myself – sifting through thousands of manuscripts in search for exciting, original, novel ideas and world-changing solutions to key global challenges. I am a gem-hunter and gems rarely present in polished form. It is my role to protect diamonds in the rough from the potentially crushing impact of the review process. My co-editor-in-chief (Scott McCabe) and I have never intervened in the review system to reject a paper that reviewers and an associate editor recommended for publication. But we have saved quite a few diamonds in the rough from getting crushed. These saves are among our most important contributions as editors-in-chief.

The myth that journal editors are desperately looking for reasons to reject papers is a myth. As Jon Billsberry [8] puts it: “Contrary to popular belief, editors do not like rejecting submissions. We are not sadistic monsters who thrive on the misery of others. Instead, we tend to be sympathetic souls who give up their time because we want to help people develop their manuscripts to publishable standards.”

Myth 2 – “Publishing is like buying a lottery ticket”

A little bit of luck is always involved in the review process, but some authors seem to believe that publishing has similarities with lotteries: the more you submit, the higher your chances of getting published. I have experienced instances where authors submitted a handful of papers within a month; all of them flawed in the same fundamental ways. I imagine that the perceived anonymity of submitting manuscripts using online submission systems fuels this trend. Some evidence for this hypothesis is provided by empirical research into the acceptance of online submission systems when they were first introduced [9]: journal editors reported an increase in manuscripts of lower quality and an increase in manuscripts that were not aligned with the journal’s aims and scope.

The perception of some authors that submitting a manuscript to a journal has similarities with purchasing a lottery ticket is incorrect. Luck is involved, but the effect of luck is asymmetric: when submitting an excellent manuscript, a little bit of luck does affect the outcome. When submitting a poor manuscript, no amount of luck will ever get the manuscript over the line. There is no point in bombarding journals with poor submissions. A more constructive approach is to familiarize oneself with the journal by reading many articles published in the journal and by studying the aims and scope of the journal and the submission guidelines. If the first submitted article is rejected, authors can leverage the comments made by the editors or reviewers to improve the next study and, in so doing, increase the likelihood of this next study being published. This systematic approach will be much more successful than gambling on getting lucky eventually.

Myth 3 – “Journals / editors / reviewers have no memory”

Reviewers remember manuscripts they have reviewed. If a paper they rejected re-emerges unchanged in the same or another journal, reviewers will have only limited enthusiasm for supporting its publication. Editors also have a memory. They remember authors who bombard them regularly with poorly prepared manuscripts and who appear never to read the feedback because subsequent submissions have the same weaknesses. Most importantly: journal submission systems have a memory – the best memory of all: a history of activity for each person with a registered account. If an editor receives a submission from an author, they can click on their name in the online submission system and access the entire submission and review history.

Because editors, reviewers and online manuscript submission systems have a memory, attempts to “recycle” manuscripts are unlikely to succeed. I have seen instances where authors, after a year or two, resubmit manuscripts that have previously been rejected, possibly assuming the prior submission will have been forgotten. Nothing is ever forgotten.

The issue of memory, especially that of editorial online systems, is also relevant in terms of research integrity. I observe that, as authors are experiencing increasing publication pressure from their employers, the temptation increases to take shortcuts which frequently push the boundaries of research integrity. Ensuring research integrity is a key role of journal editors [10,11]. Paper rejections due to integrity concerns can cause significant reputational damage to authors. Editors remember authors who repeatedly display certain questionable behaviors. Maybe more importantly, rejections justified by integrity concerns are recorded as such in online submission systems, which are accessible to future journal editors. Nothing is ever forgotten. The journal memory lives on even as editors-in-chief move on.

Myth 4 – “The editor does not like…”

“Dislike myths” result from the belief in a conspiracy against the author, the research topic they investigate, the research methodology they have chosen or any other aspect of the submission. Dislike myths as I understand them in this section do not refer to systematic biases. Systematic biases have been repeatedly argued to exist, including with respect to author gender [2], author nationality and author institution [12]. These investigations are complicated by the fact that the quality of manuscripts varies – arguably more so than the investigated characteristics [3]. I suspect that – like in all other domains of life – systematic bias does exist, but this is not what I would like to discuss in this section. I would like to discuss what could also (unkindly) be described as author paranoia: my perception that authors often feel editors dislike them, the topic they have chosen to investigate or the method they have chosen to deploy.

A. “The editor / reviewer does not like me”

Some authors feel that editors or associate editors have personal issues with them. This is certainly not the norm. Think of Annals of Tourism Research: each year, we receive more than 1400 manuscripts. We are barely able to process them all without severely compromising the quality of work we do for our daytime employers who pay our salaries – our universities. We are gem hunters who sift though the many submissions in search of gems. We do not have an interest, nor do we have the time or emotional energy to develop personal sentiments towards authors. When we find a gem, we do not care who presents it to us. We publish ideas, discoveries, empirical insights, not authors.

B. “The editor / reviewer does not like my topic of research”

The issue around topics is more complex than that around authors. Editors do assess manuscripts based on relevance, and each editor has their own interpretation of relevance. As such, the topic of investigation does affect publication outcome, but not in a way that is worth getting paranoid about. Some editors may give priority to “hot” topics, topics they believe will attract many citations. At Annals of Tourism Research, we assess which topics deserve attention – irrespective of citation potential – and create article collections around them. These topics are not necessarily “hot”. For example, research on animal ethics is very unlikely to attract many citations, but we as editors-in-chief believe it is an important topic, so we prioritize it. For authors, such explicit displays of topic interest by journals present invaluable information: if they work in those areas, editors are likely to pay more attention to their work than to topics that they journal is less focused on. This does not mean that editors will compromise on quality or integrity, of course. But an equally strong study will be more likely to be published in a journal that has a declared interest in the topic than in a journal that does not.

Importantly, at Annals of Tourism Research, we never reject a paper because we have an in-principle objection against a specific topic and I am confident that this is true for most journals. COVID-19 is a good case in point. In early 2020, journals were madly soliciting COVID papers, with some journals lowering their quality expectations substantially just to benefit from the inevitable citation avalanche triggered by early COVID papers. Evidence for the fact that quality expectations were indeed lowered in some instances and reviews may have been rushed by some journals is provided by the fact that a substantial number of COVID articles has since been retracted [13]. But we continue to receive a couple of COVID papers a week. Most of them contribute little to knowledge, yet we never dismiss them a priori just because we quietly think to ourselves: “not another COVID paper”. We read each one of them. And if the manuscript makes an original contribution, we consider it for publication. Never do we reject a paper at Annals of Tourism Research a priori because of the topic under investigation. I am confident that this holds true for most journal editors.

C. “The editor / reviewer does not like my methodology”

Having spent two decades thinking about measurement in the social sciences (especially measurement using surveys) and one specific data analytic technique (market segmentation analysis), I have always been very outspoken about methodological approaches that are likely to lead to a desk-rejection in Annals of Tourism Research [14]. It could be argued, therefore, that there are measurement approaches and methodologies I do not like. But this is not a matter of personal preference (liking or not liking). Rather, my decisions are based on overwhelming scientific evidence that certain measurement approaches and methods are flawed – even if they are widely used. It is this overwhelming scientific evidence that leads me to reject papers based on methodological concerns.

To ensure transparency, we publish Annals of Tourism Research Viewpoints in which we explain to authors clearly which the main reasons for desk-rejection are [14,15]. Authors keen to publish in our journal, we hope, read these Viewpoints, and reflect on their methodological decisions as a result. Many journal editors use the approach of communicating with (potential) authors via Editorials or via their submission guidelines. All those documents are a must-read for authors wanting to minimize their risk of desk-rejection by selecting the publication outlet that is most compatible with their research.

Myth 5 – “If I can get away with it, it’s OK”

Many authors are either unaware of their ethical obligations as researchers or they choose to ignore them. Although I have written an opinion piece on text duplication that is accessible to all authors submitting to Annals of Tourism Research, and despite my best efforts to raise the issue of plagiarism in a Viewpoint [16] and regularly on social media, I am still forced to desk-reject about a quarter of manuscripts because the automatic text duplication check provided by the publisher highlights an unacceptable level of duplication from sources that are not exempt. Fellows journal editors also observe an increase in breaches of research integrity by authors who submit manuscripts to their journals [17] and many of them have offered guidance and stimulated conversation about the importance of research ethics through their Editorials [18]. Submitting manuscripts that are in breach of research integrity guidelines is a waste of time for both the authors and the editors.

As an author, I have adopted a pre-submission process for articles I submit to journals; I now run the submission-system generated pdf through my university’s plagiarism software by default to convince myself that there is no duplication that could possibly be perceived as plagiarism.

Another phenomenon that is on the rise is the dissection of studies into the smallest publishable unit. Each smallest publishable unit is then submitted as its own manuscript [17, 19]. This practice is commonly referred to as “salami-slicing” – a tasty illustration of trying to sell slices rather then the entire product to journals.

In terms of authorship, I am noticing an increase in the number of authors. Empirical evidence of this trend has emerged across many scholarly research areas going back three decades [20]. The trend seems to be ongoing [21]. While some authors investigating trends in authors numbers argue that collaborative work leads to better research, the predominant explanation is that the academic culture is to blame; researchers increasingly feel that they must publish to succeed. Yet, the uninterrupted thinking time they require to create groundbreaking work is being eroded in the modern university system. If this is indeed the explanation, the concern is: how many of the listed authors have actually done enough to warrant legitimate authorship? Criteria for legitimate authorship have been set out by many research organizations [22]. My impression is that many authorships are not warranted and is based on the observation that many articles with many authors are simple in nature. They may, for example, involve relatively straightforward analyses of secondary data sets. In such instances it is not obvious how the required work could have been divided into enough substantial units to keep all authors busy.

Overall, I observe unethical practices in publishing to be on the rise. Yet authors – who find themselves under increasing publication pressures in today’s academic environment – are tempted to engage in such practices. Sometimes they get away with it. But that does not make unethical publishing behavior acceptable. And, in the long term, unethical publishing practices negatively affect author reputation. What seems initially like a quick win (an additional journal publication to strengthen the CV) can turn into a substantial long-term career disadvantage (a reputation of gaming the system frowned upon in the scholarly community and potentially disadvantaging authors, including by not being welcome on collaborative projects or not being hired at universities that focus on research excellence).

Myth 6 – “Having a senior co-author increases publication chances”

This is a particularly destructive myth because it opens the door to the exploitation of early career researchers by senior researchers who contribute nothing or not enough to warrant authorship. Authorship by people who fail to meet the required inclusion criteria for authors is also referred to as courtesy authorship. An empirical study investigating courtesy authorship [23] reports that 14% of study participants stated they had added courtesy authors to their articles five times or more in the last 12 months. The people who have been added without having done the required work tended to be male (80%), older (75%) and more senior in terms of their academic position (65%). Concerningly, the most frequently provided explanations included fear of retaliation, wanting to avoid uncomfortable social situations, and the expectation that the courtesy authorship would be reciprocated in future.

I cannot speak for all journals, but at Annals of Tourism Research we are not impressed by the names of senior authors on manuscripts. We assess the manuscript, not the authors and nothing makes us happier, in fact, than publishing a brilliant paper from an early career researcher or a team of early career researchers.

Myth 7 – “Once you have survived one round of review, the deal is done”

Over the past five years I recall several instances where authors complained that it was unreasonable for the manuscript to be rejected in the second or third review round. It is not unreasonable. The commitment of the journal to publish a manuscript does not increase with the number of review rounds. I remember a manuscript I really liked and really did want to see published. But the authors never seemed to be able to fix one single key issue a methods expert reviewer expressed concerns about. The manuscript went through seven rounds of review before being published and I would have been willing to reject it even at that late stage if the methodological issue had not been resolved.

This leads into the conversation about how important responses to reviewers are. I would argue that the written response to reviewers is the most important document submitted in the revision process. Surprisingly, many authors treat it like a check list and use language that fails to express a genuine engagement with the feedback provided by reviewers. Responses are best formulated as a conversation with reviewers. The reviewers must see that the authors have really thought about their feedback and responded with great care, irrespective of whether they acted upon the feedback or chose not to.

Discussion / Recommendations

The purposes research is “the creation of new knowledge and/or the use of existing knowledge in a new and creative way so as to generate new concepts, methodologies, inventions and understandings” [24]. The primary role of journals is to disseminate research. As opposed to other dissemination avenues, such as making reports available online or including them in open access preprint servers, journals fulfill at least three additional roles: through peer review they assess the novelty of work and the validity of conclusions drawn given the method used, and through editorial screening they ensure compliance with the principles of research integrity. These three aims are pursued within the limitations of being a system reliant on humans. Humans do not make perfect decisions and do not have available perfect information to inform their decisions. Smith, a former journal editor himself, described peer review as follows: “In addition to being poor at detecting gross defects and almost useless for detecting fraud [peer review] is slow, expensive, profligate of academic time, highly subjective, something of a lottery, prone to bias, and easily abused” [1].

Not surprisingly, given all the weaknesses of the peer review system, myths have emerged about how journals operate. I discussed seven such myths in this article. Acknowledging the existence of these myths and hearing journal editors share their views about them is a first step towards dispelling them or at least opening them up for a broader discussion. These myths point to several tangible recommendations for journal editors, reviewers, and authors, which empower them to choose actions every day to contribute to a better journal review system, rather than to further erode its integrity.

Journal editors have an obligation to continue to focus on publishing novel research that derives valid conclusions and complies with the principles of research integrity. They must resist the temptation to let other considerations, including the journal impact factor, influence their acceptance decisions. They also have an obligation to ensure that the peer review process as they implement it minimizes bias and human error. Increasingly, it also falls upon journal editors to identify potential breaches of principles of research integrity and to firmly defend these principles as they communicate rejection decisions to authors. In my opinion, editors should be vocal and communicate their observations and frustrations, dispel myths across all communication avenues available to them, and offer guidance to authors and the scholarly community more broadly. Importantly: journal editors set the tone within their journal communities and beyond. It is important, therefore, that they communicate with all stakeholders within reasonable timeframes and respectfully and not tolerate any disrespectful communications. I see more such communications in recent times. Some authors take the liberty to send quite aggressive letters to editors and associate editors. Some reviewers and even some associate editors choose the wording of their feedback poorly. We shape our scholarly community with every action we take. With every friendly communication we make our community a better place for our colleagues and ourselves.

Reviewers who feel they lack expertise or time to provide a review, have an obligation to notify the journal of their unavailability quickly to avoid unnecessary delays for authors. Reviewers who agree to provide an evaluation of a manuscript have an obligation to offer an unbiased expert assessment within a reasonable timeframe. The assessment must be formulated using respectful language, should outline both the positives and the opportunities for improvement, should be specific enough to guide authors in their revision, and should avoid being judgmental about what authors may or may not be capable of doing as they revise the manuscript. As an author, I have many times chosen to collect new data during the revision phase. Limitations of the data set, therefore, should not be an automatic rejection criterion.

Authors must always remember the purpose of their existence as researchers. The purpose is to create new knowledge, including knowledge that expands our understanding without having practical impact in mind (blue sky research) and knowledge that can immediately be leveraged to create change (applied research). The purpose of the existence of a researcher is not to publish papers. The purpose of the existence of a researcher is not to maximize citations. If all manuscripts I handle as a journal editor were motivated by curiosity and the desire to create new knowledge, rejection rates would be substantially lower. The other factor that would substantially increase acceptance rates is the understanding that manuscripts need to be crafted. Crafting a paper is not unlike creating a vase. Initially, the research is a clump of clay. Reviewers don’t appreciate clumps of clay. The research needs to be shaped in a way that it is attractive to readers; in a way that takes the reader by the hand and guides them, patiently and step by step, though the exciting story of this research. Authors with the highest publication success rates commit to dedicating many days and hours at the potter’s wheel to shape the clay to perfection. They write and rewrite manuscripts many times, seek feedback and then rewrite again before hitting the “submit” button.

Authors are well-advised to choose publication outlets carefully. Many of the myths – especially those relating to authors feeling that editor seek to reject (their) papers – result from authors submitting their work to journals that are not suitable. Carefully reading the aims and scope of the journal and reading papers on the topic of investigation that have been published in the target journal is a very good investment of time. Ignoring the aims and scope of the journals is mentioned consistently by journal editors as a key reason for desk rejection [6,25]. Different journals also have substantially different expectations in terms of the contributions articles make. Some journals aim to develop theory. Submitting a purely empirical article to such a journal is unwise as the outcome is known in advance. Importantly, authors must ensure not to submit their work to predatory journals – journals that promise but do implement a rigorous review. The lines between legitimate and predatory journals are getting increasingly blurred. If in doubt, seek advice from an experienced colleague or just send the manuscript elsewhere.

Finally, authors must also resist the temptation to deploy publication “strategies”, most of which are borderline unethical. I usually refer to this as “playing publication games”, but this expression may be a little bit harsh and may fail to acknowledge the many shades of grey. Unethical publication strategies include salami-slicing papers, listing authors who have done barely enough to qualify, not writing papers from scratch but rather extensively reusing text fragments. Perfectly ethical, yet concerning, publication strategies include following study templates and writing series of articles with minimal knowledge contribution in each.

The reasons that authors are tempted to deploy these strategies are obvious. Universities have a desire to quantify the performance of their staff and choose as criteria simple numeric indicators such as the number of articles published, the number of citations and the h-index. Researchers respond by optimizing these criteria and, as a result, the number of published articles is skyrocketing. The field of tourism alone, published 10,750 journal articles in 2021 across 27 journals [26]. The avalanche of manuscripts being submitted to journals leads to the establishment of more journals and attracts more commercial or even predatory publishers, fueling a downward spiral in terms of the quality of research and, with it, loss of credibility of insights derived from scholarly research. Authors rush studies. Studies do not stand up to scrutiny and must be retracted. Society wonders which research studies to trust, not knowing which one may be the next to be retracted.

This collective shift towards publication obsession is not serving society well and it is not serving scholars well. On the long term, the pressure to publish many articles and the temptation of authors to deploy publication strategies rather than to make a genuine effort to create knowledge by investigating the questions they are curious about erodes the knowledge creation sector. Deploying publication strategies stands in direct contradiction to the reasons that drove most of us to become researchers. Ultimately, publication strategies contribute to the transformation of research from the trade of knowledge creation to the trade of article production. But what is the value of a trade of article production? Articles don’t lead to progress. Articles don’t save the world. Articles don’t solve humanities’ greatest challenges. New knowledge does. We need to again become knowledge creators and disseminators of new knowledge. If we fail to do so, we will create less knowledge in future and will lose the trust of society as the engine room of innovation.

This brings me to a final point: the increasing importance of mentors as guardians of the knowledge creation trade. I have been extraordinarily fortunate to train alongside the legendary Josef Mazanec [27]. He role-modelled integrity. He role-modelled the pursuit of scholarly inquiry as a contest of the best ideas, with publications only an afterthought; a vehicle to share discoveries, insights, and solutions for the world with the world. I would love to see a revival of academic research that is driven by curiosity, implemented with uncompromising rigor, and guided by integrity. Mentors must step up. They must be visible and vocal in role-modelling research as an idealistic pursuit. They must equip the next generation with the skillset required to undertake research at the highest level of quality and instill in them the unwavering commitment to do so without compromising or cutting corners. Mentors must ensure that the next generation of researchers does not seek shelter in “template research” that maximizes publication chances with minimal marginal contributions to knowledge, but rather inspire them to pursue their own brilliant ideas, regardless of the anticipated reaction of the (conservative) scholarly community. Such mentors will enjoy the privilege of witnessing how the next generation of researchers will make groundbreaking blue sky discoveries and find creative solutions to tackle the very trickiest challenges humanity is facing today and into the future.

Acknowledgement

I thank the Australian Research Council for funding under Laureate Fellowship FL190100143.

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