Review of: "Behavioral optimization in Scientific Publishing"
Sarah Rose Fitzgerald · 2023
SignificanceThe topic of this paper is important to scholarly publishing.Peer review is threatened by bias and it is important to consider how peer review might be improved.New ideas often come from researchers applying new theories, methods, and interdisciplinary collaborations.Manuscripts are sometimes rejected because reviewers or editors do not understand a new method or topic for a field.Rejections are often made of papers that are conceptually important, but need a lot of stylistic effort from reviewers or editors such as extensive spelling and grammar corrections, reorganization, and further interpretation of the findings. ArgumentationThe author should refrain from making exaggerated statements without support from the literature.The paper will be stronger if the author makes more moderate, realistic, evidence-based assertions.The paper should be credible.No one can revolutionize publishing with one paper.Just aim to improve it.It is ok to make progress without solving all the problems of peer review.Here are some places where the author has claimed too much without support from the literature: Peer review has not "largely deteriorated to support a dichotomous editorial decision of accepting or rejecting a manuscript".Almost no articles are published outright with no changes from the submission manuscript.Usually, authors are able to implement feedback from reviewers according to their own interpretation.Often, authors are able to leave pieces of their manuscript which reviewers object to unchanged if they provide a reasonable justification for their choice.Overall, as noted in the literature cited, peer review improves the quality of manuscripts rather than simply rejecting or accepting them as is.Often, journals offer the option for reviewers to recommend that an article be submitted to a more appropriate journal.Rejections are not always final.Sometimes, manuscripts which are initially rejected can be resubmitted with significant revisions.The author does not provide evidence that "Conformity bias is likely to be very strong in science because it is an important judgement".The decision of a single reviewer to recommend acceptance or rejection for a single manuscript is not very important.Each reviewer is just one piece of the decision and there are few consequences for their decision on any single manuscript.A single editor's decision on a single manuscript is not very important either.Lots of scholarship gets published with flaws and authors have lots of backup journals to submit to if they aren't accepted at their first choice.