Fast and Furious (?)

On the following pages we print our annual Thank-you to the community of reviewers who make this journal happen. In 2017 we could increase their number to 207, 35 more than in the year before. For comparison, The Annals of Thoracic Surgery had 1035 guest reviewers.[1] So we are not doing too badly. The distribution onto many shoulders still leads to a manuscript load of up to 12 per reviewer, with the revised versions included. It is therefore quite an achievement that the time span from submission to a first decision is a mere 30 days. So we are really fast!

This number is a little bit biased, because if one looks closer at the manuscripts that were rejected, about a third of them were decided upon by the Editor without having entered the review process at all. Somewhat cynically we call this the Sudden Death option. There are five major reasons for it:

1. Submission of an invalid category (e.g., case reports to the main journal)

2. Subject out of scope of the journal

3. Lack of originality

4. Faulty science including plagiarism

5. Incomprehensible English

It is a very sad fact that in 16% of these, number 4 was the case – which makes the Editor furious indeed.

But even without counting the unreviewed culprits the slowest outlier took “only” 100 days for his review (of course he is male). It is therefore fair to say that the review process of ThCVS is among the fastest between comparable journals, something the Editor is grateful for – hence this praise of our reviewers.

Are they “furious” as well? The rejection rate upon first decision is around 63% with a final overall rejection rate of approximately 70%, which can be considered a common denominator of mid-size, fastidious, specialized journals. So fury is average – another reason to be grateful.

How can one judge as an Editor if things are running the right way? By comparison with peers, of course, by looking over the garden fence to check if the grass is not a shade greener on the other side after all. Every four years, the last time in Chicago in September 2017, the “Peer Review Congress” is held where editors convene and peers discuss peer review and other policies of scientific journals. The result of benchmarking ThCVS against this formidable community can be summarized with a hearty “Carry on!” Our time frames are fast, our selection rates and criteria are stringent, and our double-blinded review process is definitely the right thing to do – if one does classical peer review.

You may by now regard this Editorial a self-praising, embarrassing, and completely inept eulogy of a smug and complacent Editor. If so, I've missed the mark. It is meant to be understood as a summary of the value of this combined team effort which ThCVS really is. And if something is done well, all participants are still allowed to be proud of it – especially our modest reviewers who, hidden in the dark except once a year, contributed crucially to this success and will hopefully continue to do so – fast and just that right bit furious.

• Reference

• 1 Announcement: Guest reviewers for The Annals of Thoracic Surgery. Ann Thorac Surg 2018; 105: 5-9