Abstract
Dear Reader, Scientist, and Antiaging Enthusiast,
Rejuvenation Research continues its commitment to publishing high-impact articles and we welcome submissions that have been reviewed but ultimately rejected elsewhere. We all have experience with the very disappointing and seemingly irrational need to satisfy all reviewers in all their opinions, even when these opinions might be erroneous. To add insult to injury, even after the comments were addressed, one recalcitrant reviewer can have the power to “kill the paper,” and every laboratory has its stories and even songs about “reviewer number 2.”
Interestingly, in that grape vine vibe is the feeling that our best scientific work often turns out to be the most difficult to publish. One reason could be that the most innovative and significant discoveries seem to go against the grain, and there is a fear to upset those who published the dominant paradigm, even when new data submitted for a publication clearly show that such a previous paradigm might be inaccurate and needs to be changed.
The current approach to accept or reject scientific data for publication seems counterproductive because many experiments might be conducted to simply satisfy reviewers' comments (and often reviewers' egos). Then after a year or two of working on the revisions, performing additional studies that were suggested (in actuality, mandated) by the reviewers, redirecting, say, $500,000 from other research (yes, it often takes that long and is that expensive), the article is in the end rejected.
Another drawback is that all these data, which are often very useful to other researchers and can lead to new medicine, are not available to the biomedical community when the deserving article is rejected. To improve this somewhat, many journals have before-publication platforms for releasing the unpublished data to the public. The value of this remains to be seen, as among those unpublished articles, some certainly are of visibly poor quality, yet are read and considered alongside with the reputable, well peer-reviewed body of scientific work. As the result, the distinctions between good and bad articles dissolve.
On the other end of the spectrum, most researchers would not want their unpublished data to be freely shared, and for a good reason: scientific competition in low-funding environment is brutal and conceptual plagiarism is unchecked. For example, nothing protects a serially rejected article that has been online in its unpublished state from being scooped in its main conceptual discovery and published by someone else under a different title and repeated experimental data.
Prolonged online presence in the unpublished state also creates a negative impression that the work, and by connection the authors, is underperforming. This could be true for some before-publication articles, whereas for others, hanging in limbo in an unpublished state could simply mean that reviewer 2 is upset that the authors provided a good rationale not to do some of the suggested studies, instead of obeying their directions and ego.
To address these problems, Rejuvenation Research strives to be similar in its modus operandi to eLife, JCB, PNAS, PLoS, etc., journals that are led by active-duty research faculty. Accordingly, our decisions to accept, majorly or minorly revise, or reject scientific work are based on the first-hand expertise of the editors. We respect reviewers' opinions, but we do not simply add them up so that the sum of replies makes the decision on publication.
To paraphrase Emma Lazarus' sonnet, New Colossus of the Statue of Liberty: Give me your tired, your poor [misfortunate rejected manuscripts] Your huddled masses [of valid scientific data] yearning to breathe free… Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!