Are scientific journals delaying doctoral theses?

In case you are surprised, such email messages are not uncommon. In fact, the first such email I received was quite effective in exerting moral pressure on me as an editor. The message attempted to hold me accountable for the timely submission of a thesis. Presumably, this even comes with a kind of obligation to also accept the manuscript, no matter how crappy it might be. Otherwise, I as editor would be responsible for a doctoral student's failure, thereby possibly ending a promising scientific career. But is this really so?

Editors of reputable scientific journals have an ethical obligation to readers and authors to accept and publish manuscripts on the basis of scientific quality and merit. Therefore—after an initial screening to assess the overall suitability for the journal—manuscripts must be peer-reviewed. Based on the reviewers' comments and the editor's own assessment, the editor then decides whether to accept the manuscript, whether it needs some revision, or whether it should be rejected. The possibility to reject a manuscript is essential in this process—unless you work for a predatory journal whose only interest is to generate revenue for the publisher.

In Ethology, roughly half of all submissions are eventually rejected, so any attempt to guarantee an author a (positive) decision and within a set period of time would be irresponsible and unethical to all other authors and readers of the journal, who trust in the journal's reputation and expect only high-quality behavioural research to be published by Ethology.

Presumably, most people who have written an email such as the one mentioned above are not even aware that what they do is unethical. They probably write such emails in an attempt to help their students finish their theses in time. But where does the expectation come from that a journal could make a (presumably) positive decision within a certain period of time? The problem may have to do with how many universities deal with the submission of dissertations.

When I was a doctoral student, it was still common practice at German universities to submit dissertations as monographs. My university was sort of progressive in that it allowed doctoral students to structure their dissertations into separate chapters, each of which could be published as a separate paper. However, the pressure on doctoral students to publish as early as possible and ideally before finishing their degree has strongly increased since then. As a consequence, my university also changed its policy: now theses have to be submitted as monographs or cumulatively as separate chapters, two of which have to be published or at least have to be accepted by a scientific journal before thesis submission. Most doctoral students in biology choose such a cumulative thesis, even if this comes at the cost of losing time with submitting and revising manuscripts. As a consequence, funding often runs out long before the chapters have been published and the thesis can be handed in. This process leads to emails such as the one mentioned above, attempting to make editors ethically responsible for the timely submission of dissertations. But if there should be any ethical obligation to allow doctoral students to submit their theses on time, it is on the side of the universities and their submission rules, not journals or editors.

Recently, one of my students struggled to get his first thesis chapter published. After two rounds of peer review, the reviewers were happy with all changes and recommended publication, but then the editor of the journal started four more rounds of editorial reviewing, demanding further substantial changes to content and form of the manuscript. I caught myself thinking that this editor was preventing my student from being able to finish his thesis in time (and will run out of funding). But I had to admit the editor is not responsible for this. As an editor, he is responsible for the quality and integrity of manuscripts published by the journal: after all, we had decided to submit my student's work to this particular journal because it has a high reputation. I may disagree with the micromanagement approach of this editor, but for sure he is not to blame for the in-time submission of my student's thesis…

Wolfgang Goymann: Conceptualization; writing – original draft; writing – review and editing.