Comments on Profile Post by Vtory

It's most rewarding when the ms is in good shape to start with and you can really contribute to making sure the details hang together - but when the authors are essentially using the reviewers to finish writing it for them and the editors haven't at least skimmed it to make sure it's complete enough before sending it on, it gets tedious.

I miss my days as a executive editor, but I don't miss the authors who used our resources to polish unfinished manuscripts.

Now I am feeling very lucky to meet a nice ms and authors.. By the way, curious about you two's reasons not to immediately reject (or screen out if editor) unfinished submissions. Maybe some too high potentials to ignore?

@Vtory I did :)

Probably varies from one field to another, but in Finance and Econ sending an unpolished manuscript to a top journal is just asking for a reject (or even a desk reject from the AE) unless you are already a big name and/or the core of the paper is really something amazing and original

I came to loathe journals that asked authors to recommend reviewers. Made it too easy for editors to send out mss without properly looking at them, and for authors to get agreeable reviews. The time to get friendly reviewers to look at a ms to make sure a) it's finished and b) it's defensible is BEFORE submission for publication!!

AFA legal journals go, the worst offenders were big named authors that the Board invited to submit. It then became the job of the editors to “fix” the manuscript.