The editors at Cell Systems are awesome!

I just had a really lovely experience reviewing a paper at Cell Systems. Started out fairly standard: got an e-mail asking to review, paper looked good (showing good taste), so I accepted, then submitted my review. Then I got a personal e-mail from the editor thanking me for my review, remarking how nice the paper was, and asking a question or two. Then they issued the decision letter and I got a personal thank you for my review. It just really helped me feel involved and connected to the process, much more so than the auto-generated form e-mails I typically get. It also makes me way more inclined to see the editors at Cell Systems as thoughtful people who care about science, and thus more likely to recommend it to others and to submit there myself. Note to editors: a little humanity goes a long way. (I have had similarly good experiences with the editors at Nature Methods.)

Also want to say for the record that I still think that the current journal system is generally not good for how we do science. But in the meantime while we wait for preprints or whatever to become the standard, I think it’s nice to acknowledge a job well done when you see it.