While failing to comment on our scientific output, the reviewer harped us for our language skills, was extremely biased towards the data, asked us to perform experiments which were already present in the manuscript and even cited a wrong reference when stating why our study was not interesting enough. While the editor apologized for the delay due to lack of reviewers, we were appalled by the language used by the reviewers to describe the study. We were informed two weeks before our rejection that they would update us if the paper went out for review and finally received our comments after a total of 62 days of review. For the next 40 days, there was minimal response from the editorial team. While we were fine with that as well, the entire process from this point onwards was just frustrating. However, it took more than 2 weeks for the manuscript to be assigned an editor as indicated by the online portal. Our submission to this journal was essentially due to the "quick review process" highlighted on the website. Ultimately, we were failed by the handling editor, who should have done a better job at managing the chosen reviewers and inspecting their reviews for quality and potential bias before accepting them. But we decided not to pursue the issue further. This was curious given that the sole request in our appeal was to send our paper to a new reviewer. After almost 3 months, we received two more reviews from the two original reviewers, which contained almost the exact same responses. We then successfully appealed for a revised manuscript to be sent to a third reviewer. Our handling editor had no familiarity with the subject matter and was therefore unable to address the integrity and quality of these reviews or provide their own opinion. One simply said accept as is, the other literally stated they did not read the whole paper because they didn't like it. Then after waiting another month they still could not get the reviews so they sent us low-quality reviews. Initially, there was a delay in the review of our manuscript because they could not track down the third reviewer they selected. My experience with Nature Communications was the worst I've had out of the 13 different journals I have published in.
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