Darren L Dahly

What would be wrong with just writing in the review the recommendation that the famous stars on the paper assist the ECR in making it a paper meeting at least acceptable standards? (And a few examples of why you say that)?

I don't disagree, but it doesn't save the me the irritation over having to write the review in the first place.

Well, what I suggested is a lot less work, right?

If that's the only thing I write, then I think it's disregarded 100% (though its possibly disregarded anyway)..so it feels like a choice to do a proper review or to just skip it altogether. I think :)

Well, if you provide a few blatant reasons that are sufficient for you to reject... When I'm reviewing I don't see myself as being a free expert proofreader for lazy authors.

I’ve reviewed papers where sections clearly written by different authors & thrown together clearly without a senior author reading over -leaving disjointed sections making review job hard. Authors don’t do this - have one author fully read the final version!

Or all of the authors.

Would senior academics let papers be submitted in a terrible state if they were publicly available on pre-print severs? Reviewers are there to protect the reputation of science not selfish professors who just game the system with little thought to the consequences.

Absolutely, pre-print servers should become the norm /mandatory. Some of the best peer review I’ve had in the last few years have been comments (posted on @biorxivpreprint tweeted, emailed or verbal) on preprints, which made the papers less terrible ...

I’m curious, why would preprints generate better comments?

The preprint reviewers read the paper that had their interest, not because someone asked them to review it? If I’m honest, very few of the papers I’m invited to review are papers I would read based on their title/abstract