Help me find the right journal!

[Ancient Fellow]

The article is accepted,finally, will be published soon.

I'm glad you found a home for your piece. I think you made a good call in your situation and wanted to share an experience I had. I publish in three areas, but usually my articles fit pretty clearly into one or another of the disciplines, and I try to place them in the leading journals in that area. Occasionally, though, one gets a reviewer that isn't as well versed in the other disciplines and that can be a time-consuming headache. I had one article that, unusually, seemed to straddle all three disciplines pretty equally. After some thought, I sought out a journal that focused on the overlap of disciplines. It wasn't a 'prestige' journal, but perfectly respectable, and publishing it there meant an absence of the headaches I anticipated.

[bio-nonymous]

Then one journal rejects another article of mine based on one reviewer who
misread it--and thinks I should mention ideas that I already did or implied.
A waste of time after 6 months waiting. It's often merely subjective.

Congratulations on the acceptance.

I agree that it is frustrating to have readers miss the point of an article. Sometimes this is entirely due to the reader's negligence. However, often when I get such comments, it points to something in the draft that can be improved. Maybe you are not clear enough? Maybe you need to be more explicit? Maybe there is something else you can do to make it clear what you are trying to do in an article?

A peer-reviewer is probably going to be as careful a reader as your article will have. Many other people will glance at an article, look only at parts, etc., and are more likely to overlook or misinterpret aspects. So when I get a review that says, "your article doesn't have a thesis," or, "you should do X in the article," after I kvetch, "there is a thesis," or, "but my article does X," I then look at where the article actually does these things and make sure it does it in a clear way.

I try to get something useful out of every peer review--even if it is just to try to idiot-proof my article more so idiots like the second reviewer cannot misread it again.

What I find really frustrating is waiting six months, a year, etc., only to get a one-line rejection that the article is not a good fit. That's rather useless.

MyWord, Congrats on acceptance of your article! A few months ago I finally published a paper that went through 4 different journals, with multiple rounds of revisions for two of the journals, and almost 2 years to finally being accepted. However the final product did turn out to be vastly superior to the original so I think that while the delays were frustrating, peer review did work.

I agree with how frustrating it is when a reviewer of a manuscript (or grant proposal) has criticisms that were addressed, but which they either didn't read or didn't understand. I used to get angry, now I just try to do as JerseyJay (at least when I calm down!) and try to see where I went wrong--can I make more clear or prominent so that the next reviewer doesn't miss that content or misinterpret my points. However, what I really dislike is when a reviewer suggests, "can you discuss [this minute point that I am interested in but has no real relevance to the main purpose of the manuscript], or do [this data analysis that isn't really pertinent and will take a huge amount of time]." Then you add all of the things requested only to have the next reviewer hint the paper is bloated with irrelevant content!!!!

[jerseyjay]

I agree with how frustrating it is when a reviewer of a manuscript (or grant proposal) has criticisms that were addressed, but which they either didn't read or didn't understand. I used to get angry, now I just try to do as JerseyJay (at least when I calm down!) and try to see where I went wrong--can I make more clear or prominent so that the next reviewer doesn't miss that content or misinterpret my points. However, what I really dislike is when a reviewer suggests, "can you discuss [this minute point that I am interested in but has no real relevance to the main purpose of the manuscript], or do [this data analysis that isn't really pertinent and will take a huge amount of time]." Then you add all of the things requested only to have the next reviewer hint the paper is bloated with irrelevant content!!!!

My first reaction to a review is often anger, or dismay that some people really are stupid. But I take a few minutes/hours/days to calm down, then roll up my sleeves and go to work.

I think part of the problem is that editors don't often do their job as adjudicating reviewers' reports. It is acceptable to reply to a review requesting additive but irrelevant points with a cover letter that says, "while interesting, I think that a substantive discussion on snail mating habits will dilute the focus of this article on 18th-century sculpture, although I may address this in future research." The reviewer's role is to make a decision, not just echo what a reviewer might say, especially when two reviewers contradict each other. But not all editors do this well.