What Decisions Must an Editor Make That Authors Never See?

Leslie H. Nicoll, PhD, MBA, RN, FAAN

The Invisible Side of Editorial Work

Authors experience the editorial process through a narrow aperture: submission, peer review, decision, revision. What they see—reviewer comments, decision letters, timelines—represents only a small fraction of the work required to move a manuscript through a journal system.

Editors, by contrast, operate in a space where decisions are continuous, layered, and often made under constraint. Many of these decisions are not shared with authors—not because they are secretive or arbitrary, but because they concern the functioning of the journal as a system rather than the merits of a single manuscript.

Understanding these invisible decisions is essential for editors themselves, for editorial boards, and for authors who seek to interpret editorial actions accurately rather than personally.

Decision 1: Whether a Manuscript Enters Peer Review at All

One of the most consequential editorial decisions occurs before peer review begins: whether the manuscript is sent out for review at all.

You may weigh several factors in making this determination. Does the manuscript fit the journal’s scope and mission? Does it meet minimum standards of scholarship and reporting? Are there ethical concerns that need to be addressed before further consideration? Has similar work appeared recently? And perhaps most pragmatically, do you have the reviewer capacity and editorial bandwidth to shepherd this manuscript through a full review cycle?

Authors often experience this as a “desk rejection.” What they do not see is the editorial calculus behind it. Sending a manuscript to peer review is not a neutral act. It commits scarce reviewer labor and editorial time. In constrained systems, not every plausible manuscript can be reviewed, even if it is competently written.

Framed this way, the decision is less about gatekeeping and more about stewardship—protecting the integrity and sustainability of the review process itself.

Decision 2: Which Reviewers to Invite—and How Many

Once a manuscript enters peer review, a different set of judgments begins. You must decide how many reviewers are needed, what kinds of expertise are required, and whether balance—methodological, disciplinary, or clinical—matters more than depth in this particular case. You must also determine when “enough” review has been obtained.

From the author’s perspective, peer review is visible only through the reports that are ultimately returned. What remains unseen is the infrastructure behind those reports: the number of invitations declined, the time spent recruiting appropriate reviewers, and the quiet tradeoffs between waiting for an ideal reviewer and proceeding with the expertise that is available.

You may find yourself weighing whether to continue inviting additional reviewers or to move forward once sufficient information has been gathered. In practice, this is rarely a mechanical calculation. It is a judgment call shaped by reviewer fatigue, uneven participation, competing deadlines, and the journal’s overall time sensitivity.

Editors routinely conclude that one strong, well-reasoned review—combined with careful editorial assessment—is preferable to indefinite delay in pursuit of a second or third opinion that may not materially change the outcome. The goal is not numerical symmetry. It is informed decision-making under constraint.

Decision 3: How to Interpret and Weigh Reviewer Comments

Peer review does not produce a single verdict. It produces inputs—often conflicting, uneven, or misaligned with the journal’s mission.

Your task is not simply to pass those comments along. It is to interpret them. You must decide which critiques are central and which are peripheral, whether disagreement reflects substantive uncertainty or merely disciplinary difference, and when a reviewer’s suggestions extend beyond reasonable scope. You may also find yourself assessing how much weight to give to tone, expressed confidence, or even perceived seniority.

From the author’s vantage point, reviewer comments can appear to be aggregated mechanically: two or three reports arrive, and a decision follows. What is rarely visible is the interpretive work in between. You are not counting votes; you are synthesizing perspectives. This work—sometimes described as editorial synthesis—requires judgment, not consensus.

Publication ethics guidance, including Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) principles, emphasizes that editors should not alter reviewer comments in ways that misrepresent their meaning. That guidance exists to protect fairness and transparency. At the same time, you remain responsible for ensuring that peer review is constructive, proportionate, and aligned with the journal’s standards. In practice, this may mean clarifying tone, consolidating overlapping critiques, or reframing comments so that revision focuses on substantive issues rather than peripheral or unnecessarily harsh phrasing.

The goal is not to filter disagreement or shield authors from critique. It is to ensure that the feedback transmitted serves the work and the journal. In doing so, you shape not only the fate of a manuscript but the integrity and tone of the review process itself.

Decision 4: What Level of Revision Is Reasonable to Request

Another invisible decision concerns revision burden.

When reviewer comments are returned, you must determine whether the requested revisions are proportionate to the manuscript’s contribution. Not every suggested expansion, additional analysis, or reframing will meaningfully strengthen the work. You may ask whether proposed methodological changes are realistically feasible after the fact, or whether they amount to redesign rather than revision.

You must also decide whether a revised manuscript requires further external review, or whether your own assessment is sufficient to determine that the essential concerns have been addressed. And at some point, you may conclude that diminishing returns have been reached—that additional rounds of revision would consume time and goodwill without substantially improving the scholarship.

From the author’s perspective, a revision decision may appear straightforward: revise and resubmit, revise again, or revise with minor changes. What remains unseen is the editor’s internal assessment of feasibility, proportionality, and value.

These are not shortcuts. They are capacity-aware judgments. You are balancing rigor with sustainability, ensuring that the review process strengthens the work without exhausting the system that supports it.

Decision 5: How to Manage Journal Capacity and Flow

Your responsibility extends beyond individual manuscripts. You are not simply evaluating isolated submissions; you are shaping the flow of content across months and years.

This requires decisions about acceptance rates, backlog management, issue planning, publication timelines, and the cultivation of special sections or thematic priorities. Each acceptance alters the balance of what follows. Each delay affects the cadence of publication. Each thematic emphasis signals direction.

At times, you may decline a manuscript not because it is weak, but because the journal cannot absorb additional content in that area without displacing other priorities. A strong paper submitted at the wrong moment may compete with strategic needs that are invisible to the author.

From the outside, the outcome may appear purely evaluative: accepted or rejected. What remains unseen is the systemic context—the need to balance variety, maintain coherence, manage backlog, and sustain momentum across issues.

In this way, editorial decisions are not only about quality. They are about trajectory. You are curating not just a collection of manuscripts, but a body of work unfolding over time.

Decision 6: When Ethical Concerns Rise to Editorial Action

Some of the most difficult editorial decisions never appear in decision letters at all.

In the course of reviewing manuscripts, you may encounter suspected plagiarism, redundant publication, undisclosed conflicts of interest, questionable authorship practices, or concerns raised confidentially by reviewers. These issues do not fit neatly into revise-or-reject categories. They require discretion.

When such concerns arise, you must determine whether they warrant formal investigation, how much evidence is sufficient to proceed, and whether to involve publishers, institutions, or external ethics bodies. Just as importantly, you must decide when not to escalate—when a concern can be addressed proportionately within the journal’s existing processes.

These decisions demand careful calibration. Overreaction can be as damaging as inaction. Escalating prematurely may unfairly harm reputations; failing to act may compromise trust. Authors typically see only the final outcome—a request for clarification, a rejection, or occasionally a more formal inquiry. What they do not see is the deliberation that precedes it.

Here, editorial judgment operates not only as evaluation, but as governance. You are safeguarding both fairness and integrity, often without public acknowledgment.

Decision 7: When Editorial Judgment Overrides Process

Perhaps the least visible—and most essential—editorial decision occurs when judgment supersedes process.

There are moments when you may accept a manuscript despite mixed reviews because its contribution is timely, necessary, or field-shaping. There are other moments when you may reject a technically sound manuscript because, although competently executed, it does not meaningfully advance the discipline. You may conclude that further review is unlikely to yield convergence and choose to end the process. Or you may decide that additional external evaluation is unnecessary once you are satisfied that core concerns have been addressed.

From the outside, such decisions can appear inconsistent. Authors may assume that outcomes should mirror reviewer consensus or follow procedural symmetry. Yet peer review does not produce verdicts. It produces information. Your responsibility is to interpret that information within the context of the journal’s mission, standards, and trajectory. In that sense, judgment is not a deviation from process; it is the culmination of it. These decisions are not failures of peer review. They are the reason editors exist at all. Peer review informs decisions—it does not make them.

Why Some Decisions Remain Invisible

Many editorial decisions remain invisible by necessity.

Some involve confidential communications from reviewers who have entrusted you with candid assessment. Others concern journal operations rather than manuscript content—capacity constraints, issue balance, backlog considerations, or ethical consultations. Still others require professional discretion: calibrating tone, protecting reputations, or resolving concerns proportionately.

In many cases, sharing the full internal deliberation would not add clarity. It would add noise.

Transparency does not require disclosure of every intermediate step. It requires coherence. It requires fairness. It requires principled outcomes that align with the journal’s mission and standards.

The editor’s responsibility is not to narrate every internal calculation. It is to ensure that decisions are consistent, reasoned, and defensible—even when the process that produced them remains largely unseen.

Reframing the Editor’s Role

When authors misunderstand editorial decisions, they may assume arbitrariness or bias. When editors fail to articulate their role clearly, those misunderstandings can multiply.

Yet the editor is not merely a conduit for peer review. You are a systems actor—balancing quality, ethics, capacity, trajectory, and stewardship across the life of the journal. Each decision sits within a broader architecture of responsibility that extends beyond any single manuscript.

The judgments authors never see are not ancillary to editorial work. They are its substance.

The Carry Back

Editorial work is often evaluated only through its visible outputs: acceptances, rejections, revision letters. But the integrity of a journal depends on a lattice of judgments that unfold quietly behind those outcomes. When you understand your role as stewardship within a constrained system—not as mechanical gatekeeping—you begin to see that invisibility is not evidence of arbitrariness. It is evidence of governance.

The work authors never see is not peripheral. It is the architecture that allows the visible work to stand.