Peer review is like a box of chocolates.

In talking with Gary Lackmann recently about my philosophy of peer review, the issue came up about how much you can push authors to submit to your will as Editor. I thought about what G. K. Batchelor said in his article in Journal of Fluid Mechanics “Preoccupations of a journal editor” that you don’t have much control over the papers that are submitted to the journal. Instead, you deal with what is submitted to you, the good and the bad.

Paraphrasing Forrest Gump: “Papers are like a box of chocolates. Often times you don’t know what you’ve got until you bite into them.”

The question is whether you bite into it and finish it, or, after tasting it, you spit it out.

(Image from memegenerator.com)