Jtdylktuy

My coauthor and I submitted our article for publication to one of the best journals in our field. After a long time of review, we got a rejection decision by the editor based on the referee report which we received. After that we wrote to the editor and explained to him/her that the referee arguments to reject our paper are wrong and provided point by point evidence to support our conclusions.

However, the editor did not accept our arguments so we then sent our paper to another journal which is also among the best in our field. After waiting for considerable time, we got a rejection decision from the second journal and the same referee report as the first journal. I repeat the two reports which we received from two journals are completely identical! We have asked the editor of the second journal for explanations why we got the same report and so far we have not heard any reply.

Based on these facts, we believe that our paper is being rejected for some unknown personal reasons not clear to us rather than objective reasons connected with our work. In between the two submissions, we have revised our paper based on the first journal referee report.

Have your ever experienced such a situation?

How should we behave in this case?

As a reviewer, when I get asked to review a paper the second time I will see whether my comments from the initial review were addressed. If not, then I will submit the same review. Why should I update my review if the paper has not been updated?

Getting the same reviewer is a very common occurrence. Perhaps in your situation the reviewer is misguided. However, when re-submitting a paper you should make every effort to address previous reviews. And, in any case, legitimate issues raised by the reviewer should be addressed. Even if you think the reviewer is confused, you should seek to clarify the confusing points. They may be confusing to others too.

In your position there is probably not much you can do other than write to the editor explaining the situation. The best argument you can put forth is to explain that all of the points in the review have already been addressed in the submission. That makes it look like the reviewer didn't read it, which means the editor may side with you.

Yes, I have experienced the same situation. You can revise your paper explicitly explaining why the criticism of the reviewer is wrong. Then write a cover letter explaining all previous history of submissions and rejections and emphasise which changes have been made. Then submit the paper and the cover letter to another journal.

Based on these facts, we believe that our paper is being rejected for some unknown personal reasons not clear to us rather than objective reasons connected with our work.

I see no justification at all for that conclusion.

In many cases, there is a fairly obvious person whom one would ask to review a particular paper – for example, if you write a paper extending my work, there's a good chance that I'll get asked to review that. As I recall, there's a paper that I was asked to review three times.

The reviewer rejected your paper the first time and you feel they were mistaken, but you couldn't convince the editor of this. You revised the paper and submitted to a new journal which, by chance, chose the same reviewer. In my opinion, the most likely thing is that the reviewer didn't notice you'd changed the paper to address their comments and they thought, “This hasn't changed, so my old review still applies.” They would not have seen the rebuttal that you sent to the first editor; all they have seen is what they mistakenly believed to be the same paper, twice.

You should email the editor and explain that you received this exact review the first time you submitted the paper and that you have already revised the paper to address the comments made. Ask them to ask the reviewer to re-read the paper.