unreasonable manuscript reviews getting you down?
It’s happened to me and it’s probably happened to you. I was talking to a buddy of mine today who has been having a heck of a time with a manuscript review. The unreasonable manuscript review. Yes, it can be a very touchy subject and a bad review can cut you deep. But have you ever had a reviewer who wants you to demonstrate some additional step that is waaaaaay beyond the quality scale of that journal–i.e. you’re thinking, if I could do that, I’d be submitting this article to Nature or Science rather than this journal? Those kinds of reviews really get to me because there is really nothing you can. I was discussing this with my buddy today, and he really has no options. His manuscript has been in review for almost a year now and he can spend another 4 months working on satisfying this insatiable reviewer, but what will he have to show. (1) If he can’t do it–experimental limitations make it unlikely that this is even doable–then has lost 4 months where the paper could be in review at another journal. (2) if he does get it done and the paper gets accepted at this journal, he will have lost a Nature Medicine quality article to a second tier journal.
This happened to me on review for a manuscript to a journal one notch under Nature Medicine where if I could do what the reviewer demanded, I’d have won the Nobel prize. But what to do? You can’t tell a reviewer that their demand is too good for that journal. I ultimately had to submit to another journal. I’m afraid that my buddy will have to do similarly.
I suspect that these types of reviews happen when competitors review the manuscript. I don’t think the quality of articles in most journals is any secret so it is generally quite obvious when reviewers ask for ridiculous things. Actually, I received some ridiculous reviews on another manuscript, which the editor luckily ignored and when the manuscript was published, the reviewers were revealed and it was indeed a competitor who was making the ridiculous reviews. In my buddy’s case, he submitted to a specialty journal where the editor-in-chief is one of his competitors and left a specific note in his reviews stating that he needed to do X.
If anyone has suggestions on how to reply to such types of reviews, please let me know.
