Reviewing editors are not editors -- they're more like reviewers on retainer. Reviewing editors exist specifically because the professional editors at Science w

Reviewing editors are not editors -- they're more like reviewers on retainer. Reviewing editors exist specifically because the professional editors at Science will often be handling manuscripts they are not qualified to understand. The parent comment was about $prestigious_journal, not the central example of a scientific journal (which I agree is an academically edited specialist journal). In my experience, al least the top 3-4 tiers of Springer/Nature journals are professionally edited. I doubt Elsevier is any different. It only gets worse as the publishers continue to generate new branded specialist journals and mega-journals trading on the prestige of the flagship publication.