Leslie H. Nicoll, PhD, MBA, RN, FAAN
Writer’s Camp Director
Abstract
Peer review remains central to scholarly publishing, but reviewer scarcity, delayed reports, and conflicting evaluations increasingly complicate editorial decisions. This Research Report examines Layer 4, a framework for AI-assisted editorial synthesis, through five editorial cases and an illustrative example. Four functions emerged: routine synthesis, capacity compensation, arbitration between divergent inputs, and diagnosis of non-convergence. Layer 4 is proposed as a means of organizing evidence and supporting accountable editorial judgment, not replacing peer review or the editor’s responsibility for decisions.
A peer reviewer evaluates a manuscript. An editor must do something different: bring the reviews together, weigh competing assessments, consider the journal’s standards, and reach a defensible decision. That essential work has a name: editorial synthesis. In this first Research Report presented through our Dual Dissemination format, Leslie H. Nicoll examines editorial synthesis as Layer 4 of the Journal Systems Framework. The Research Report investigates how structured, AI-assisted synthesis can support editorial judgment across five manuscript cases. The accompanying essay explains why this often-unseen work deserves greater attention in editorial scholarship and education. This is our first research report published here at Writer’s Camp. Your comments and thoughts are welcome!
Click here to read the complete Research Report (PDF document).
The Invisible Work of Editors: Why Editorial Synthesis Deserves a Name
Leslie H. Nicoll
Peer review is the dominant lens through which scholarly publishing is understood. Although widespread external peer review is a relatively recent development in the history of scientific publishing, it has come to be regarded as the gold standard for evaluating manuscripts and determining what enters the scholarly record.1
Consequently, peer review has become one of the most extensively studied aspects of scholarly publishing.2 Far less attention has been paid to the intellectual work editors perform after reviewer reports have been received.
Peer review did not become the dominant feature of scholarly publishing by accident. It addressed a fundamental need: independent evaluation of scientific work before publication. As journals expanded in number, scope, and specialization, external review became an accepted mechanism for strengthening manuscripts, identifying methodological weaknesses, and maintaining confidence in the scientific record. Today, few aspects of scholarly publishing are more closely associated with scientific rigor than peer review itself.
Yet peer review has never functioned in isolation. Reviewer reports do not publish manuscripts, reject them, request revisions, or establish editorial priorities. They inform editorial decisions, but they do not replace them. Every recommendation—whether to accept, revise, or reject—must ultimately be interpreted within the broader context of the journal’s mission, standards, readership, editorial policies, and strategic direction.
This distinction is easy to overlook because editorial reasoning is largely invisible. Reviewers write reports. Authors receive decision letters. Readers encounter the published article. The intellectual process that connects reviewer evaluations to an editorial decision is seldom documented and even less frequently studied. Increasingly, standardized decision templates and automated editorial systems further obscure the editor’s contribution, emphasizing the outcome of the process rather than the reasoning behind it.3 As a result, editorial reasoning leaves very little scholarly trace.
Looking Beyond Peer Review
The Journal Systems Framework provides a broader way of understanding scholarly publishing by viewing journals as interconnected systems rather than collections of independent editorial tasks.4,5 Within the Journal Systems Framework, peer review occupies an essential place, but it is only one component of a larger editorial process. Before a manuscript reaches peer review, editors determine whether it is appropriate for the journal and worthy of external evaluation. After the reviews are returned, editors must interpret the evidence they contain, reconcile differing perspectives, and determine the most appropriate course of action. Publication, in other words, depends on a series of interconnected editorial functions rather than on peer review alone.
Viewing journals as systems changes the questions that need to be asked. Instead of focusing exclusively on how reviewer reports are generated, attention shifts to how those reports are transformed into editorial decisions. How do editors weigh conflicting recommendations? How are reviewer comments integrated into a coherent decision? What role do journal mission, editorial priorities, and publication standards play in that process? These are questions about editorial synthesis rather than peer review, and they have received comparatively little scholarly attention.
This shift in perspective is important because it moves attention from individual editorial activities to the relationships among them. Reviewer reports do not exist
in isolation; they become meaningful only when interpreted within the larger editorial system. Understanding how that interpretation occurs is essential to understanding how journals function.
The Missing Layer
The accompanying Research Report examines editorial synthesis as the defining activity of Layer 4, the governance layer of the Journal Systems Framework. Editorial synthesis refers to the intellectual process through which editors transform reviewer reports and other relevant information into a coherent editorial decision. It is distinct from peer review itself. Reviewers evaluate manuscripts independently; editors integrate those evaluations, consider them in light of the journal’s mission and standards, and determine the most appropriate course of action.
The work that follows peer review is fundamentally different from peer review itself. Reviewers evaluate manuscripts from their own disciplinary perspectives, offering independent assessments of strengths, weaknesses, originality, rigor, and significance. Editors receive those assessments, but their responsibility extends beyond summarizing or transmitting reviewer comments. Reviewer reports provide evidence; editorial decisions require judgment.
Editorial synthesis is not a mechanical exercise. Editors identify patterns across reviewer reports, distinguish substantive concerns from differences in perspective, evaluate the relative importance of reviewer comments, and determine whether identified weaknesses can reasonably be addressed through revision. They also bring information to the process that reviewers typically do not possess: the journal’s mission, editorial priorities, publication standards, ethical considerations, prior editorial decisions, and the needs of the journal’s readership.
Some editorial decisions are straightforward. Others require extensive deliberation because reviewer recommendations conflict, reviews emphasize different aspects of the manuscript, or the available evidence is incomplete. In every case, however, the editor remains responsible for interpreting the evidence and making an accountable decision on behalf of the journal.
Editorial synthesis is also the point at which governance is exercised. Editors act not only on behalf of individual manuscripts, but on behalf of the journal itself. Decisions reflect editorial policies, ethical standards, the journal’s mission, and its responsibility to readers and the scholarly community. In this sense, Layer 4 represents more than cognitive work; it is the governance function through which journals maintain their identity, standards, and accountability.
Recognizing editorial synthesis as a distinct editorial function does not change what editors do. Editors have always synthesized reviewer reports. What changes is the ability to describe, examine, teach, and study that work as an essential component of editorial practice. Within the Journal Systems Framework, identifying editorial synthesis as Layer 4 locates this work within the broader editorial system, alongside the other functions required to move a manuscript from submission to publication.
Supporting Editorial Judgment
Once editorial synthesis is recognized as a distinct editorial function, a different set of questions emerges. How can editors be better supported in performing this work? How might editorial reasoning become more transparent, more consistent, or easier to document? How can editorial judgment be strengthened without diminishing the editor’s responsibility for the final decision?
The accompanying Research Report explores one possible approach. Rather than asking whether artificial intelligence can replace reviewers or editors, it examines whether artificial intelligence can support editorial synthesis by helping editors organize complex information, identify patterns across reviewer reports, surface unresolved issues, and draft coherent summaries of the available evidence. The objective is not to automate editorial judgment, but to strengthen the process through which that judgment is exercised.
This distinction is critical. Artificial intelligence does not make editorial decisions, nor should it. Responsibility for publication decisions remains with editors. Layer 4 therefore represents not a transfer of editorial authority, but an opportunity to better understand, document, and support one of the least visible yet most consequential functions within scholarly publishing.
Conclusion
For decades, efforts to improve scholarly publishing have focused on strengthening peer review. Those efforts remain essential. Peer review is, and should remain, a cornerstone of scholarly communication. Yet peer review alone does not explain how editors make publication decisions.
Between reviewer reports and editorial decisions lies the largely invisible work of editorial synthesis. It is here that evidence is interpreted, competing perspectives are reconciled, journal priorities are considered, and editorial responsibility is exercised. Editors have always performed this work. What has been missing is a conceptual framework for describing, studying, and supporting it.
The Journal Systems Framework provides that broader perspective by viewing journals as interconnected editorial systems rather than isolated processes. Within that framework, Layer 4 identifies editorial synthesis as the governance function through which reviewer input is transformed into accountable editorial action. Recognizing Layer 4 is more than an exercise in terminology. It creates opportunities to investigate how editorial decisions are made, to develop better approaches to editor education and mentoring, and to design tools that strengthen, rather than replace, editorial judgment.
The accompanying Research Report represents one step in that direction. By examining editorial synthesis across five editorial cases, it demonstrates that this previously invisible work can be observed, described, and systematically studied. That is an important beginning, but it is only a beginning. Once editorial synthesis is recognized as a distinct governance function, new questions emerge about how editors reason, how editorial expertise develops, and how journal systems can better support consistent, transparent, and accountable decision- making.
Reviewer reports provide evidence. Editorial decisions require judgment. Between one and the other lies the invisible work of editors.
References
1. Nicoll LH. The Impact of the Photocopier on Peer Review and Nursing Theory. Nursing Research. 2018;67(2):74-80. doi:10.1097/NNR.0000000000000236
2. Gelling L, East L, Hayter M, et al. The peer reviewer crisis: Sustaining scholarly community or reimagining the future of peer review? Journal of Clinical Nursing. 2026;(jocn.70374). doi:10.1111/jocn.70374
3. Gupta S, Danaher P, Mittal V, Morrin M. A manuscript’s journey through peer review: Insights from almost 3,000 editorial decisions at the Journal of Marketing Research. JMR, Journal of Marketing Research. 2023;60(5):835-846. doi:10.1177/00222437231188507
4. Nicoll LH. Journals as systems: Rethinking how scholarly publishing works. The Writer’s Camp Journal. 2026;2(1):3. doi:10.5281/ZENODO.18099850
5. Nicoll LH. How journals work: A systems-based framework for understanding scholarly publishing. The Writer’s Camp Journal. 2026;2(1):4. doi:10.5281/ZENODO.18037409
Author: Leslie H. Nicoll
Reviewed and Edited by: Marilyn H. Oermann
Copyright © 2026 Writer’s Camp and Leslie H. Nicoll. CC-BY-ND 4.0
Citation: Nicoll LH. The invisible work of editors: Why editorial synthesis deserves a name. The Writer’s Camp Journal, 2026; 2(4):6. doi:10.5281/zenodo.23705578