What do you think of this review process?

[oggbogg]

I submitted a paper to a pretty well respected journal in my field about ten months ago. I finally heard back today. It was a reject. Fair enough. I've had enough of those, after all. But I just don't know what to make of the process.

The reviews were pretty much diametrically opposed - e.g. one said it was very well written, the other rejected it because it was so poorly written. The first liked it but suggested I should have used a control group which would be very unusual in this type of qualitative research. There was no indication whether the lack of a control group (which I can't provide) was grounds for rejection in itself. The second reviewer hated the paper and, apparently, me! But their comments were just ... also a bit weird. For example, noting a term I had used but totally misspelling it and asking me to explain what it means, although I had provided a definition (with the correct spelling!) And then when I used the same term later in the paper, asking again for a definition (illustrated with ???!!!!! - there were many ????!!!! I thought it was normal in reviews to use words)? One of the strangest comments was that I use 'that' too often! There's more but I won't go on. The other slightly odd point is that when I politely asked about the delay after about 6 months, the editorial assistant said that they were waiting for the third reviewer to respond. But when it was returned it was with just two reviews.

What do I make of this and what should I do next? I am wondering whether I turn this around quite quickly and resubmit somewhere else or whether it is a truly hopeless case and I should go for a total rewrite.

Apologies if I have over-used 'that' in this message, I am now very conscious of this linguistic tic!

Pick thru their comments to find the 'fair enough I see why they said that' statements, spend 3-4 hours improving the article in response to those comments & resubmit. Might also need to reshape depending on next target journal.

About the other specifics:

3rd reviewer was a flake (never delivered) so editor had to decide based on the polarised comments

Make the definition a bit more explicit and early on; for whatever reason, that reviewer didn't find it obvious

Reviewers are only human, they mess up (re spelling, excessive ????). Try to use whatever they say constructively & disregard the things you can't use to improve the article.

Or appeal. Sounds like a pretty poor process. Top journal in my field has a success rate of 10% on appeal.

If you hear nothing for as long as you are happy to wait (a month) then just withdraw the appeal and submit somewhere else.

I think you have enough to appeal on

Thanks for replying both. I think having slept on it I will try to turn it around quite quickly and at least hope for a better review process next time. It's so frustrating to wait so long for a paper only to be rejected with so little that is helpful in the reviews themselves - and despite the reviewers also saying that they think it's an important topic with excellent data. I do think it was a pretty rubbish review process to be honest. I think I will probably avoid this particular journal for a bit. Not sure what to do about the control group comment though - as far as I can tell, very few qualitative papers in my field (sociology) would ever get published on that basis as almost none have a control group. But I'm puzzling over it and worried that there is something specific about the claims I am making in this paper which would suggest a control group is necessary, in which case there is little point resubmitting. Sigh.

I would write to the editor politely laying out (briefly) your reasons for not including a control group and why it is not usual, and saying reviewer 2 was xxx- and then request another reviewer. Supply 4 names of people who might do it with email addresses. Worth a shot anyway

I think that bigkidsdidit's approach is a bit better than my "guns blazing" suggestions - I think I would still recommend pushing back to the journal. Basically you got rejected after an inadequate review process. They clearly found it difficult to find reviewers so suggesting a list of names is helpful. A very quick email pointing this out might be surprisingly successful.

Thanks for your advice everybody. I have had a good think about it and would agree that it really was an inadequate review process. BUT having calmed myself down I also realise that there were a couple of points that I do need to address, thinking about which have led me to realise a better way of structuring the paper. So I am working on that and will resubmit this to a different journal where I have always had good experiences in terms of the review process. I am feeling proud of myself as I am absolutely terrible at dealing with rejections and this is one of the first times I have adopted a growth mindset to take on board the feedback and aim to quickly turn it around! Thanks again for responses.

It sounds like a rubbish review process, but if it's a journal struggling to find quality qualitative reviewers right now, it's probably not worth appealing there. I mean experienced editors wouldn't just shove along a review about 'control groups' for a qualitative paper...

I think you've taken the right message from the paper, which is there's some quick wins here, but somewhere else might be a better fit.

So hard to read contradictory reviews, I'm finding reviews are really more variable than usual, some are several pages long which I find a bit too much and some a few lines of 'I liked this'. I've started doing shorter reviews as it gets to the stage you can pick apart absolutely everything- I just draw attention to, say, three things worth fixing, and ignore the rest or put it down to individual choices. If it's not that fixable, I would suggest not publishing. I'm fed up with reviews with 50/60 points over several pages and I try not to submit them myself anymore.