Editorial by the Editor‐in‐Chief: The appeal process over editorial decisions

• Author: David Hay
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijau.12159
• Published date: 01 July 2019
• Date: 01 July 2019

EDITORIAL

Editorial by the Editor‐in‐Chief: The appeal process over

editorial decisions

The International Journal of Auditing has recently made a decision

on an appeal by a group of authors against an editorial decision.

The appeal confirms the editorial decision to reject the paper

concerned.

Appeals are rare and unusual, as editorial decisions are generally

seen as final. In this case, because the authors raised specific issues,

and because I was interested in exploring the process of addressing

an appeal, we gave consideration to the appeal. I am publishing the

outcome of the appeal in this editorial, with the details of the article

under consideration omitted, because it may be useful to other

authors and potential authors.

Although appeals are rarely considered by journals, the journal's

obligations under the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) ethical

guidelines require in its Core Practice 3 that a journal should have “a

clearly described process for handling complaints against the journal,

its staff, editorial board or publisher”. The COPE guidelines are

available at https://publicationethics.org/about.

This appeal, in fact, was not one in which the authors complained

about the journal, its staff, editorial board, or publisher, but simply

an objection to the decision that had been made. It was also not an

appeal that raised complex ethical issues, but a more straightforward

dispute over whether the editor was following the recommendations

of the reviewers, and whether the authors had done enough work to

make the paper publishable. The editors recognize that mistakes can

occur in the editorial process, although authors should be aware that

mistakes are unlikely.

In considering the appeal we also kept in mind that the integrity of

the journal and the quality of the research published in it are of great

importance. If it should ever happen that the editorial process is faulty,

and a paper is rejected without proper consideration, then it would

nevertheless not be appropriate to publish it in the circumstances

when it includes errors, or if it has a conclusion that is not supported

by the evidence. Quality is the most important consideration. Authors

would themselves prefer not to have an article published when it is

incorrect or misleading.

In this instance, I instituted an appeal process where an editor

who was independent of the original decisions reviewed the article

under consideration, the letters from the editor concerned to the

authors, the reviewers' comments, and the manuscript under

consideration.

The authors had submitted an initial version of the article and

three revisions. The process took more than 3 years. During the pro-

cess the original reviewers became unavailable, and a new reviewer

was brought in.

The authors asserted that they had met all of the requirements of

the first two reviewers, and that the editor relied too much on the

comments of the third reviewer, who was brought in at a later stage.

They said “although we respect the decision, we would like to lodge

a final appeal based on what we consider to be an overreliance on

Reviewer 3's report in the course of reaching the decision to reject

the manuscript.”

However, examining the correspondence between the editor and

the authors showed that:

•The paper had never received a “revise and resubmit,”but each

submission had been rejected, with a recommendation to resubmit

the paper as a new paper.

•The remaining reviewer had substantial objections to the research

design, because the dependent variables are not audit specific but

dependent on general macroeconomic factors. The reviewer, and

the editor, considered that the study design is thus fundamentally

flawed. The reviewing editor agreed.

•These concerns had been raised by the earlier reviewers of the

paper, right from the start of the review process, including the first

round of the review.

•After carefully considering those issues, the independent decision

by the second editor has been made that the editor's decision

stands. The decision was fair, because although the paper had gone

through several rounds of review the editor had not given the

authors any encouragement to believe that it was close to

acceptance. It had been rejected at each opportunity. In addition,

the flaw in the research design was so substantial that publishing

the paper would have lowered the standard and reputation of the

journal. Further, the authors had been made aware of this issue

from the first round of review comments.

I conclude that it has been useful for the journal to explore what its

appeal process is and to make use of the process. On the other hand,

appeals need to have very strong grounds before they are likely to

Received: 24 March 2019 Accepted: 26 March 2019

DOI: 10.1111/ijau.12159

Int J Audit. 2019;23:163–164. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltdwileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ijau 163