Sending back to review after accepting the paper

[ocean2428]

One of my papers recently accepted in Nature com. Three weeks again editor sent me an email saying there are going to accept my paper and soon they will send a letter with editorial edits with style and presentation. Since I haven't heard anything three days again I sent another email asking the statues. I got a reply they are lost done with edits. Surprisingly this morning I got an email from another editor (CC'ed current editor) saying that they are sending back to review few more points. This is crazy and unheard of. I am not sure what to do. Any suggestion?

[fizzycist]

Sounds f'ed up, sorry.

Is this Nature or a Nature sub-journal? If it's Nature, I would say you should probably just hold your tongue. Publishing there could be a career-changing step and worth taking a little abuse.

If it is any of the subjournals, you could consider emailing the editors, explain your frustration, and hint to them that you are thinking of withdrawing the paper and submitting elsewhere. And honestly you could even follow through and likely get it published fairly quickly at a comparable journal since now you can share emails with positive reviews and an affirmative editorial decision at a (presumably) prestigious journal.

But these are high stakes games and if I'm being honest, I'd probably just do the simple thing and go with the flow.

[San Joaquin]

Yeah, if you aren't eminent, it might be better to be gracious.

[ocean2428]

Have you had a similar experience like this? I never heard anything like that. It's Nature Comm.

[fizzycist]

Have you had a similar experience like this? I never heard anything like that. It's Nature Comm.

No, this has never happened to me, this is definitely messed up. I have had editors add reviews that I needed to respond to after I already submitted a rebuttal (in one case I got numerous positive reviews and submitted a lengthy rebuttal only to receive an email a month later saying they just got another review in and won't send my manuscript for second round until I address that one too). And I've had plenty of fights over overzealous copy edits, last-minute title changes, editors forgetting about my manuscript for months, etc.

But your situation sounds much worse.

I've always wanted to try what I suggested (pulling out when editors are being difficult and using positive reviews to speed up review at a comparable journal). I hate that we scientists give the editors of a few for-profit journals so much power. And I dislike Nature Communications enough that I just might do it, if I were in your shoes.

All that said, the safe move is still to just wait for the new comments to come back.

[Ruralguy]

I recommend  not commenting to them any further. It seems as if communicating with them is just making things worse.  Just let it happen, and do what they say unless it really, really, really matters (and it most likely won't because we're all academics and very little of what we do matters).

[aspiring.academic]

@ocean2428, you have things moving in a positive direction on the publication and grantsmanship fronts. Don't press your luck. Just let it happen. The key takeaway from this experience is when you're in the position of these editors to not do to another researcher what was done to you.

[doc700]

I've had a pretty negative experience with Nature Comm recently.  We submitted a paper and a referee gave a very long list of questions.  We answered all.  Then round 2 that referee asked a whole bunch of unrelated new questions.  The questions were fine (clarification questions) but they did not arise from our responses to the 1st round, anything from the other referees etc.  The other 2 referees were satisfied at this point.  Rather than having us go back with the 3rd referee, the editor just rejected the paper since there were outstanding questions.  We did appeal and successfully get the chance to respond to the new questions.  The paper was ultimately accepted but I thought it was a bizarre response from the editor. 

I'm confused though -- Nature has copy editors but I thought Nature Comms just did typesetting/didn't change your text.  I thought at this point the paper was set to the typesetting service and just out of the editor hands?  The only thing I could imagine is that one of the original referees emailed the editor to raise an additional concern??  I guess you will eventually figure out what is going on when you see the new referee report?

Have you had a similar experience like this? I never heard anything like that. It's Nature Comm.