Pretty content with myself, today.
I used the one-way street called "single-blind peer review" in the wrong direction and reviewed the reviews in a (prob. pointless) letter to the editor.
You struggle hard to keep to the word-limit of the journal, just to get blamed for having a too short Materials and Results, "concealing" the many weaknesses of one's work. And nobody minds the 30p long Suppl. M&M and 113p long Suppl. R&D
Here's some examples of the "over-speculation" due to "data limitations" conveyed by "overly complex" figures.
Well, it's not the usual trivial feed your #BigData into a blackbox and publish the result as a major breakthrough type of study.
More the go down the rabbit hole of coal-face #evolution and #phylogenetics involving a lot of pondering what phylogenetic graphs show.
The product of #research (starting 25 years ago), not "hyphothesis-driven". A lot of steps and mosaic stones involved.
"Bombastically oversold", of "suspect novelty" - how many complete plastome trees are out there on beeches? How many studies revisiting and mapping the entire fossil record? How many explicitly dated primary radiations and secondary contacts?
Clearly not a "competetive manuscript due to limited impact and problems under the hood" apparent when a reviewer "lift[s] it and look[s] closely at the engine". Well, he could have looked instead into the supplementary materials and information.
The unfiltered paper, with all the major deficits outlined by Kong's/New Phyt's #PeerReview experts still in it, is now online on bioRvix.
Worth et al. Whole #chloroplast #Genomes reveal a complex genetic legacy of #LostLineages, past radiations and #SecondaryContacts in the dominant temperate deciduous tree genus #Fagus
https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.06.03.653586
Being not limited, we moved a few more figures from the supplement to the main text 😎
https://figshare.com/projects/Supplement_to_Worth_et_al_2025_Reticulate_history_of_beech/251480
grimmiges