📽️ [Video] Editor's Roles: What Journal Editors Really Do Behind the Scenes

I have spent the past decade on both sides of scientific publishing, as an author, reviewer, and editor, reviewing more than 450 manuscripts and making editorial decisions across several international journals. That experience changed the way I think about research. Many of the things researchers believe about publishing, visibility, citations, and editorial decisions simply do not match what I see every day behind the scenes. In this video, I share the lessons I wish someone had told me before I became an editor.

What I have actually observed from the editorial chair, across hundreds of manuscripts

Fit beats polish. A well-written paper submitted to the wrong journal will be desk rejected regardless of quality. A modestly written paper that matches the journal's scope precisely gets a real read.

The contribution has to be findable in under a minute. If I cannot locate the one sentence that says what is new in the introduction, the manuscript stalls before methodology is even considered.

Rebuttal letters separate careers. The authors who acknowledge every reviewer point directly, explain what changed and why, and concede where the reviewer is right, get accepted at a visibly higher rate than authors who argue line by line. This is not politeness for its own sake. It signals to an editor that the author can be trusted to handle future revisions.

Reviewer comments are worth more after acceptance than during it. The methodological gaps a reviewer flags in one paper are almost always present, unflagged, in whatever the author submits next. Most authors close the file and never look again.

Finally, I will not pretend that every editor is a careful guardian of scientific quality. Some have become bureaucrats of the publishing system, focused more on processing manuscripts and improving journal metrics than advancing science. Others become "celebrity editors," gaining influence not by championing the most original research, but by aligning their journals with whatever topic is attracting the most citations. As their visibility grows, they are invited to keynote conferences, lead panels, and shape research agendas, reinforcing the very trends they helped create. I have seen authors pressured to add unnecessary citations to an editor's journal as an unstated condition for acceptance, a practice that is clearly unethical. I have also seen rigorous, innovative research rejected simply because it was considered "too niche" or outside the current fashion. When editorial success is measured by impact factor, visibility, and citation growth rather than scientific judgment, editorial leadership becomes trend leadership. The result is a publishing system that too often rewards conformity over originality and slows the progress of genuinely transformative science.

Key takeaways

1. Most rejections are about fit and novelty at the desk stage, and methodology or rationale at review. Both are diagnosable before you submit.

2. Reviewer feedback is a reusable asset across your next several papers, not a one-time hurdle.

3. How you handle rejection and revision is visible to editors, and it follows your reputation across submissions.

The core message

The discipline that gets papers published and cited is not promotion, and it is not luck. It is knowing exactly what an editor is checking for in the first two minutes, and being honest with yourself about whether your paper clears that bar before you submit it anywhere.

What is the most useful piece of reviewer feedback you ever received, the kind you still use on new papers?

📚 Part of the playlist: Reviewers & Editors: Roles and Responsibilities

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