The former nature genetics editor has been recently here in Munich giving a talk on Open Access. Chatting after her talk, she told us that on another occasion a guy was yelling at her “you are my nemesis” because she once declined to publish his paper. We laughed but there is some serious background – journals editors often decide on careers of young people.
From my recent experience with a faulty paper in Nature I can confirm that there is no democratic control at all. Editors have unprecedented power to decide who is being further funded just by distributing impact points – to someone they know or like or think they should know or should like. I think this is another good reason for OA publishing – just format your results in a nice way and let the science world decide whom to believe, yea, yea.
Addendum 6/7/08
My critique of the Nature paper written 5/7/07 will soon now appear in another British journal.