I’ve just had a reviewer’s comments rejected – as in I completed a review for the journal but the editor has decided he doesn’t want the reviewers comments. I asked the authors for more evidence about the validity of the experimental method, which I have reason to suspect, as it is different from existing work in a way that could affect the result. This is i.m.o. an absolute red line for whether a manuscript is publication quality. (There’s also maybe a grey area though, as I submitted lastminute and requested another revision round after this one).
I’m not going to name the journal but it’s a big one in my field, one I’ve published in myself as have many in my department. Some of my superiors are even co-editors. Has this happened to you before? Feeling a bit hurt & confused and worried incase it’ll affect me professionally.
Comments
I have only done it once as an editor because the review was just unworkable, I couldn’t parse what they were actually trying to tell me/the authors, which made it not suitable to me.
In some open access journals, u as reviewer can recommend rejection, but editor often still ask authors to revise, then send back to u to review again!
Did you actually submit the comments? If not, it could be that the editor had more than two or three reviewers agree to review it and then had enough replies to make the decision. Once a decision is entered into the system, it should automatically send out a cancellation to any unsubmitted reviews.
What do you mean the editor “rejected” the comments? That the publication went forward despite your opposition? That you got an email saying “don’t worry about sending in a review; we don’t need it anymore”? Or that you sent in your referee report and were told by the editor that it was unacceptable?
Was your recommendation for re review in the comments to the authors or to the editor?
What was the tone of your review?
I’ve pulled reviews before when they have been aggressive or condescending.
Highly likley because you are a bad reviewer. Please cosult others on how best to write reviews.
So you want the editor to give you a chance to share exactly how wrong the author and other reviewers are?
How do you know the paper was accepted, or that the other reviewers ‘waved it through’? You just sound salty not to be controlling the outcome. The editor outranks you, you admitted you were inexperienced, you submitted late, this is life, deal with it.
I once referred an article back to the Editor because I had assigned a reviewer who was competent in the field, and this reviewer panned the methods based on his experience in another discipline. I felt the article was important to publish as it proved a zero-point thesis for an effect in the industry that was intuitively evident.
I wouldn’t worry about it, but I also wouldn’t waste my time reviewing for that journal again. I have never had my comments rejected that I know of, but I have had multiple manuscripts I reviewed accepted and published even though they did nothing to address very serious flaws (not even additional text to explain the limitation). I now try to be more selective about which journals I review for – some of them just don’t have adequate standards.
For a journal I am peer review coordinator on, I summarize the reviews. If two reviewers say opposite things about the same specific detail, I frame it as being what the reviewers said, and for the author’s info, but not needing to be responded to.
For another journal I review for, the editors rarely go with my overall recommendation.
I feel it’s common to let the reviewers know the overall outcome for an article (i.e. accept with minor revisions) but not to see the actual correspondence.
Damn OP looking at the comments you should probably get blacklisted from ever reviewing again 😅
Work on yourself, you shouldn’t be this bitter.
Based on the fact that you got some kind of automated response (according to the comment section), and that you submitted the review late, I’m going to guess the issue was the late submission, and not the content of the review. The editor has to make a decision in a timely fashion based on the information available to them, they can’t wait forever for one reviewer, especially if they already have other reviews submitted on time.
As others have said, it’s likely that the journal had gotten enough reviews by the time you submitted. Often this is because the first two reviews that come in are highly consistent and recommend rejection.
Sometimes an original reviewer (OR) will agree to review and then ghost; the editor then has to select a new reviewer (NR) and provide the manuscript with a standard clock for the review. Let’s say that the journal gets the other 1-2 reviews in a reasonable time frame and is just waiting on NR, the invitation for which went out recently. Suddenly, OR pops up and unexpectedly submits. If the existing reviews are enough to warrant making a decision, there’s no reason to keep the author hanging waiting for a review that may or may not arrive on time.
Best practice is to inform all reviewers with outstanding reviews that the journal has received enough reviews to reach a decision and ask the reviewers if they still want to submit in a day or two so that the author can have the benefit of their expertise. That’s what likely should have happened here.
In terms of “will I get in trouble?”, the answer is no. The things that will make an editor remember you in a bad way are the following:
* Unnecessarily snarky, negative, mean-spirited reviews that provide no constructive criticism
* Repeatedly saying yes and then not submitting a review
* Repeatedly submitting thin reviews that just high five the author when the same manuscript is getting detailed valid criticism from others
* Repeatedly not responding to invitations to review
But when I say “remember in a bad way,” it’s not like they will specifically remember your name unless you’ve submitted something super egregious. Most editorial management systems will keep records of your past behavior as a reviewer and have the option for editors to rate reviewers, though few editors do the latter. So don’t worry at all.
One option: if you think the review is valuable for the author, you may write back to the journal and ask them to pass it along. There’s usually a way for the journal to do that even if a decision has already been made.
Good luck, and thank you for agreeing to review and completing a review.
And all of you who are jumping on OP, JFC, were you mentored by honey badgers? If someone inexperienced with the reviewing process asks a reasonable question about something that’s giving them anxiety, there is no need to presume the worst here. Not everyone has good advisors who walk their students/newly minteds through how the publication process works in detail, and this particular wrinkle (decision being made after receiving sufficient reviews) is not always something that every journal communicates clearly.
I had an editor tell me they are no longer in need of my review because all of the other reviewers provided consensus. Seemed a little odd to me, but understandable. Perhaps that was the case here.
Yes it has, I know an editor and they have mentioned in a conversation that they are rejecting various reviewer comments due to suspicion of AI use.
Something similar happened to me yesterday. I did a second round of reviews on a paper that, frankly, had some major problems. I also made some suggestions to strengthen the writing, as some of the ideas weren’t presented accurately. My reviews were very addressable, professional and not at all condescending. The very next day I get a notification that the paper had been accepted. So they didn’t say they “rejected” my feedback, but, well, they did.
Also not going to name the journal, but this is supposed to be a reputable journal. I won’t be doing reviews for this journal again. What a waste of time.
Editors have to make a choice as to whether to publish or not. Were your comments on time? Sometimes the editor has to overrule the reviewers – it’s quite literally their job.
Yes. Also had this happen for an NSF grant. I love those editors to this day.
Did you write your concern directly in a private note or email to the editor?
I may be reading this wrong, but you say you submitted last minute – as in you returned your comments to the journal close to the date on which they were due? In my experience working for a journal, sometimes the editor would step in and either accept or reject a paper after revisions if the original reviewers were taking a long time to review the submission. It’s possible that the editor had enough reviews (either positive or negative) that they were able to make a decision about publication without your comments, especially if there are three other reviewers who are all recommending acceptance, one review requesting another round of revisions may get overruled.