And, as you say, the expensive publishing houses don't do anything to ensure high quality reviews. In grad school I had a paper rejected by a prestigious outlet because one reviewer thought that the experimental setup I used was too difficult and therefore they didn't trust that I was being honest about my results. They stopped just a step short of calling me a fraud. I was baffled that this was accepted by the publisher.
It was only later when I was tasked with performing reviews that I realized that almost exactly zero work is done by the publishers. It is just "well there's one Strong Reject so see-ya."
It was only later when I was tasked with performing reviews that I realized that almost exactly zero work is done by the publishers. It is just "well there's one Strong Reject so see-ya."