Reviewer identification

[allWisdom]

I have written over 70 articles and have sold over 50. Very few have had to be amended before publishing. In the past two weeks I have had 4 out of 6 rejected for reasons that seemingly have more to do with personal taste than use of English language. Examples are

1. My original - // that will use underhand methods and get your website //
Required change - // underhand[ed] methods //
Accepted version - // that will use underhanded methods and get your website //
But - http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/underhand

2. My original - // If the links grow from 0 to 500 overnight and stop at that point, the search engines will//
Required change - //overnight and stop[s] at that point //
Accepted version - // If the links grow from 0 to 500 overnight and stops at that point, the search engines will // (which I think is simply wrong)

I have no way of knowing whether my English is suddenly wrong, or if the reviewer is suspect. What is needed is some form of reviewer identification to provide an audit path.

[JStone]

Completely agree with this.

There seems to be one reviewer/editor who rejects articles based on personal preference...and it's unsettling when we don't know what that preference is to start with. Earlier in the year I had a few articles rejected for not using enough commas - fair enough, I'm not great with commas and semi colons - so I read up everything I could find on commas and changed my comma approach. Months and months and months have gone by with no rejections (for comma usage)...then suddenly a whole batch came back rejected for incorrect comma usage. So either all the other editors have been letting me get away with sloppy comma usage for the past few months, or this one editor has different rules.

*End of rant!*

[kJensen]

I recently had an article rejected with no editorial information in the response. I can only assume this was either an editor error or else it had to do with personal taste.