NETHERWORLD (RPT) – After a submission and resubmission process that one scientist described as “a hellish, soul-sucking ordeal that left me vacant, confused and nebulously vengeful,” suspicions have grown that the online portal for submitting manuscripts at a top journal is actually a portal to hell. According to the growing community of scientists concerned about this matter, the editors and reviews at this journal have been increasingly using obscure and anachronistic language, dragging authors through longer and more tortuous review processes, and relishing in the struggles of authors to meet their demands for revision, despite initially favorable reviews.
“Even though only minor revisions were requested at first, we went through 666 additional rounds of revision and resubmission. It felt like my manuscript was under review for an eternity,” a prominent scientist told an RPT correspondent. “They finally accepted my paper, but only after I broke down and told them that I had poured my heart and soul into the manuscript. Once I let them know that I had indeed given up my soul in the revision process, they seemed satisfied,” she added. Another author commented that the review process was, “so agonizing that it left me possessed by a feeling of schadenfreude that I can only temporarily relieve by providing unreasonable and sometimes openly hostile reviews for other people’s papers.”
“This accusation is ridiculous,” the editor-in-chief of the journal told RPT, “if you look at the facts, you can clearly see that it is not a place of eternal torment and punishment, but rather an intermediate state for souls and manuscripts that must undergo purification before they are let through by the holy gatekeepers of the journal.” He added, “whoever doesn’t like the way we do things here can go to hell.”
