审稿趣事：审稿人和编辑是否有偏见？

gl19860312

去年，为某催化杂志审了好几个稿子，其中有一个稿子很不同寻常。这个文章是我去年2月审完的，我当时给的结论是拒稿，今天早上打开该期刊网站想看看最近刚刚审稿的一篇文章的最终结果时，无意中发现去年被我拒绝的那个稿子居然被接收了，我感到有点纳闷。我自认为审稿比较公正，也比较严格，无论是哪个国家的作者，都一视同仁。这个文章作者是日本人，内容也不同寻常，是关于光催化降解室内沙林毒气的，我一看到整个题目就联想到了罪恶的731部队。先不说文章的内容是否冲击了我的敏感神经，我耐心地仔仔细细地看完了全文，发现文章根本达不到期刊的要求，下面是我给出的意见。

This paper described an application of TiO2 photocatalyst in the decomposition of nerve agent Sarin. Despite its importance in crisis management, the novelty of this paper is insufficient because TiO2-based UV-photocatalysis is not a new one for degrading gas contamination. The scientific content is also insufficient because the authors only provided some apparent experimental results but not the deep understanding in degradation kinetics. This paper was badly written with unclear discussion about the calculations of several kinetics parameters including adsorption rate (first and second) and decomposition rate (first and second). I don't know why the authors divided the adsorption process into two parts in Figure 1a and obtained two different adsorption rate. And, how did the authors determine the reaction order? In my opinion, the degradation processes, namely "GB-dec-first" and "GB-dec-second", should be a smoothly running one, and, the GB concentration with time should obey an exponential decrease that may indicate a first-order reaction. Too many figures were used. I think the authors may re-organize this paper and improve its science quality for another submission.

具体的问题太多了，我没有在意见中一一列出，只是选择最致命的部分。在结束审稿时，我忍不住对编辑说了一句话，以表达我的道德立场。

I don't think this topic should be paid attention by this journal because chemical warfare agents investigated by Japanese researchers may stimulate repulsion from the readers in other Asian countries.

现在，看到整个文章被接收了，我分析可能有几个原因。因为这个期刊一般送两个审稿人，我看不到另一个审稿意见，因此要么编辑让作者重新投稿了，要么直接给了作者修改的机会并最终接收。不过我的额外评论并未起到作用。

总结一下，不知各位达人是否遇到过类似的情形，我的做法是否妥当？反观我曾经为这个期刊拒绝掉的中国人来稿，其可发表性均高于这个文章，但编辑还是一无例外地砍掉了。所以，是我对这个文章有偏见，还是编辑照顾了自己的同胞（编辑也是日本人）？