The serious case of papers that remained unassigned to editors for more than a year

Building on the earlier post “The highly profitable disgusting business of scientific journals has finally begun to crumble with a little help by the European Commission”, it is worth revisiting a striking case that illustrates the systemic dysfunction in academic publishing.

n one documented and recent example, an early-career infectious diseases researcher from Italy, Noemi Felisi, experienced an extraordinary delay in the editorial process. After submitting a manuscript based on months of fieldwork on cervical cancer, her paper remained unassigned to an editor for 380 days before peer review had even begun. This case was reported in a paper published in the journal  Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics. https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2026.1740381

This is not an isolated incident but rather a symptom of a strained system. Submission volumes have increased sharply while the pool of available and willing reviewers has not kept pace. Editors frequently struggle to secure reviewers, with a majority reporting that reviewer recruitment is the most difficult part of their role.  As underscored in the recent study by Horta and Jung (2024) titled 'The Crisis of Peer Review: A Component of Scientific Evolution,' this predicament often forces editors to turn to early-career researchers, who may lack extensive publishing experience, leaving them with few alternatives.

The impact of these delays is uneven but significant. Early-career researchers are particularly vulnerable: prolonged publication timelines can jeopardize grant applications, delay fellowship opportunities, and extend time to graduation. Beyond career implications, the uncertainty itself adds psychological strain in an already competitive and precarious academic environment. Taken together, these issues highlight a peer-review ecosystem under considerable pressure—one where structural bottlenecks increasingly shape who gets published, and when — distorting knowledge production itself.

A more immediate and transformative response to these systemic delays has been the rise of preprints as a parallel, far more agile layer of scientific communication. By allowing researchers to make their findings publicly available before peer review, preprints break the exclusive dependence on a slow and often unpredictable editorial system. This not only accelerates the circulation of knowledge but also restores a degree of control to authors over when their discoveries enter the scientific discourse. Instead of months or even years of institutional invisibility, research becomes immediately accessible, open to scrutiny, citation, and global collaboration. For early-career researchers in particular, this shift can be decisive: it reduces structural power asymmetries, strengthens the protection of discovery priority, and turns what was once a passive waiting period into an active, open, and iterative ecosystem for feedback, validation, and collective refinement of scientific work and collaboration.

PS - On preprints, see also my previous post titled "Scientific Publishing Without Gatekeeping: Radical Reforms in Academic Publishing" 

Um feroz magistrado aposentado e uns cabrões e filhos da puta esfomeados

“Não se admite que um cabrão de um secretário de Estado, ministro ou um filho da puta qualquer que seja governante e receba do erário público,  gaste uma média de 295 euros por refeição paga por todos nós, através do Orçamento de Estado. Não se admite, ponto final.” https://19-pacheco-torgal-19.blogspot.com/2023/01/as-cabras-e-os-cabroes.html

No post acessível no link supra, reproduzi as palavras indignadas de um feroz magistrado aposentado que criticou os políticos que gastam verbas públicas em refeições de luxo, assim traduzindo aquilo que é o sentimento de muitos Portugueses. Volto agora a citá-lo a propósito de um artigo publicado na última edição da revista Sábado, no qual se divulga o facto da Presidente da Câmara de Matosinhos obrigar a contabilidade dessa Câmara a pagar almoços com "consumo massivo de marisco", que nalguns casos chegam a 2 mil euros. Num dos muitos almoços descritos em pormenor pela revista, apenas quatro pessoas gastaram mais de 400 euros em mariscos vários, abundantemente regados com três garrafas de Quinta do Crasto, o que adquire uma ironia particular numa altura em que o Governo fala da necessidade de agravar as coimas pela condução sob o efeito do álcool.

Revela ainda a mesma revista que a referida autarca "tem colocado inúmeros obstáculos à revista Sábado para mostrar as suas despesas", recusando inclusive divulgar a identidade dos participantes nos tais "almoços de trabalho" realizados nas marisqueiras de Matosinhos. Fica assim estabelecido um princípio absolutamente perverso: os contribuintes têm a obrigação de pagar a conta das generosas mariscadas, mas não têm o direito de saber quem são as ilustres figuras que comeram à conta dos seus impostos. É só fazer as contas, se cada uma das 308 câmaras municipais fizer uma "reunião de trabalho" de 400 euros por semana, são mais de 5 milhões de euros por ano em mariscadas regadas, o que na verdade até é uma estimativa muito por baixo porque não há apenas uma "reunião de trabalho" por semana, pois a regra é que haja várias, até no mesmo dia. Basta recordar por exemplo as 545 "reuniões de trabalho" do senhor vice-presidente da Câmara de Cascais, também em boa hora divulgadas pela mesma revista Sábado. E isto acontece no mesmo país onde, há quem sobreviva com pensões inferiores a 400 euros por mês e onde ainda hoje, há milhares de portugueses que vivem com as casas completamente destruídas pelo famoso comboio de tempestades que há poucos meses assolou o território nacional. https://19-pacheco-torgal-19.blogspot.com/2026/02/engenharia-civil-em-portugal-azar-dos.html

Há 50 anos que este país é parasitado por uma classe política manhosa e ignóbil, mas é garantido que, a bem ou a mal, com ou sem revisão da Constituição, irão aprender que, como escreveu um juiz, os luxos pagos com o dinheiro dos contribuintes são coisa muito pouco ética e até imoral. Acresce que, se em Portugal a lei já concede aos senhores presidentes de câmara um subsídio mensal de mais de mil euros, a título de despesas de representação, então é precisamente através dessa verba que devem pagar algumas das referidas extravagâncias. Aqueles que, como a senhora presidente da Câmara de Matosinhos, de forma desavergonhada, cínica e velhaca optaram por transferir esse ónus para os contribuintes, devem ser acusados e demandados judicialmente até que paguem, do seu próprio bolso, até ao último cêntimo, todo o dinheiro que gastaram em mariscadas bem regadas.

PS - Irónica ou tragicamente, a revista Sábado conseguiu pelo menos saber que um dos festins devidamente regado com Alvarinho, Bons Aires e Quinta do Crasto, foi uma "reunião de trabalho" com párocos do concelho de Matosinhos, que custou quase 500 euros. E uma semana depois desse voltou a haver uma nova e bem regada "reunião de trabalho" com os párocos do mesmo concelho, cuja factura de marisco ultrapassou 600 euros. Pelos vistos naquele concelho a Srª Presidente da Câmara gosta de ter a padralhada bem alimentada. 

The Paradox of Humility: Europe's Proudest Values May Be Its Deepest Startup Failure

https://19-pacheco-torgal-19.blogspot.com/2026/02/nuno-loureiro-in-praise-of-failure.html

Building on my previous post (linked above), it is worth disclosing the results of a French study published in the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal showing that expressed humility plays a decisive role in early-stage investors' funding decisions. The study shows that humility increases perceived likeability, trustworthiness, and the belief that founders can build strong teams. In pitch contexts, it functions as a relational signal under uncertainty. However, humility is not unambiguously rewarded. It is a double-edged signal: while it strengthens perceptions of relational capacity, it can also raise doubts about decisiveness and agency, as investors rely on simplified heuristics when evaluating entrepreneurs. https://sms.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sej.70016

There is, however, a fact the study does not advertise: France is not Silicon Valley. It is a market where startup exits are rarer, unicorns thinner on the ground, and venture capital a fraction of what flows through the American ecosystem. Which raises an uncomfortable question: what if the investor behaviour this study measures is itself part of the problem? If French investors reward humility and American investors reward audacity — and American startups consistently and dramatically outperform European ones — then Europe may not simply be playing the game differently. It may be losing it, partly by design, rewarding precisely the founder signals least associated with breakout success.

This connects to a broader mechanism: entrepreneurial evaluation operates through competing prototypes of what a "successful founder" looks like, and those prototypes are not culturally neutral. Against the backdrop of my earlier post on immigrant and minority entrepreneurship — where evidence from The Economist and MIT studies shows that immigrants and ethnic minorities disproportionately drive startup creation — the pattern sharpens further. People shaped by adversity, displacement, and systemic exclusion appear to develop precisely the adaptive capacity that conventional evaluation systems struggle to recognise, and often penalise. The startup paradox, then, is not merely that the traits most useful under uncertainty are undervalued. It is that the evaluation systems themselves may be selecting for comfort over capability, for legibility over potential.

P.S. — If the signals that feel socially virtuous within European pitch rooms are systematically disadvantaging European founders in global competition, then the question I raised in October 2024 — should Europe emulate America's cutthroat, psychopathic "culture"? — is no longer rhetorical. Europe has spent decades congratulating itself on its social sophistication. The startup gap suggests that sophistication may have a price, and that entrepreneurs, not investors, are the ones paying it. https://19-pacheco-torgal-19.blogspot.com/2024/10/align-act-accelerate-can-europes-risk.html

Update after 4 days - Blogger analytics indicate that the majority of views for this post come from the USA (24%), Germany (9%), the UK (5%), and France (5%).