Soil

The journal of the European Geosciences Union is quite challenging, and the number of articles published each year is very low. After the initial review and free plagiarism assessment, the manuscripts are published as preprints, followed by at least 6 weeks of open interactive discussion. This process is very helpful in improving the articles by receiving more useful opinions, but sometimes it can be quite lengthy depending on the field. Authors need to publicly respond to all comments from reviewers and scholars from various fields, and during this stage, they cannot upload modified manuscripts. It seems to resemble the forum style of the Frontiers series (I haven't submitted to it yet). Based on the author's provided responses and revision plans during the open discussion, the editor decides whether to allow revisions or reject the manuscript. After acceptance, all stages of review comments, different versions of the manuscript, and author responses are made public. Therefore, personally, I feel that this journal also provides a transparent sharing and learning platform for everyone to learn how to write and revise papers. I appreciate this rigorous publishing model by the Germans (except for the sometimes slow process, but at least it is transparent). Colleagues who mind publishing preprints can avoid it.

Other journals are different, they have a popular review process, which feels unprofessional. Some of the questions are explanations of nouns, which leaves one speechless. Everything is done in three months, and the editor accepts the revised images, but then waits for half a month and rejects it again, stating that there are problems with the experimental design. Sometimes, the system does not send emails for updates, and the opinions given by the editor are unacceptable. It feels like being biased and discriminated against when the submission is accepted and then rejected, encountering it once feels like being prejudiced and discriminated against.