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Does the introduction explain the objective of the research presented in the preprint?

Partly

Most of the statements are not supported by references. References are only shown until the 5th paragraph of the manuscript and only in two sentences. For example, paragraph #1 mentions that scientific journals are the core of academic publishing, without providing any numbers reported in prior analyses that support such statement. In paragraph #2 the role of editors in chief is very vaguely mentioned; since EiC are the central figure of these analyses, more could be said about the tasks and need for EiC, or its historical roots. In paragraph #3, the authors assume that most journals operate under this workflow, without providing references. Could the authors discuss journals operating under different schemes? In paragraph #4 there is a strong statement that "Editorial board members usually do not play a centralrole in deciding which articles are accepted in the journal". How do the authors come to that conclusion? Can they support it with a reference? According to the study objective, both editor in chiefs and associate editors of epidemiology journals are of interest, but there seems to be much more emphasis on editors in chief throughout the manuscript, which feels unbalanced acording to the study objective.

Are the methods well-suited for this research?

Neither appropriate nor inappropriate

A single data source (JCR) was used to identify journals containing "Epidemiology" in the title. Journals containing this term in their title do not cover all the relevant journals in the epidemiological field, although it is reasonable that this was done for practical reasons. Using JCR as the single data source is an important concern since this dataset mostly covers journals in English and "elite" journals. Other databases could be more comprehensive, such as Ulrischsweb, with the disadvantage of being subscription-based, and OpenAlex, which is an open-source project with very wide coverage. The authors found 47 eligible journals through JCR. By repeating their same strategy in OpenAlex (https://openalex.org/sources?page=1&filter=default.search:epidemiology,type:source-types/journal), I was able to find 157 journals, so it is likely that there is an important underrepresentation of journals worldwide. I encourage the authors to consider expanding their analysis to broader databases for greater representativeness and to further contextualize the JCR results. A statistical analysis section is missing from the methods. The authors mention that the Journal of Exposure Analysis and Environmental Epidemiology was discontinued, but according to the journal website, the journal is still active, so the authors may need to further explain the decision to exclude this journal. One very positive aspect is that the authors shared their analysis code through GitHub. However, the README file in the repository could be improved by telling the user what steps they should follow to reproduce the analysis. The R code that the authors mention in the manuscript is not shared in this repository. Lastly, the authors shared a dta file (STATA) which is of low interoperability with other software. It may be better to include more general data files accessible to anyone (for example, txt, csv). The GitHub repository does not contain a license, so it is not clear if external users are able to reanalyze or reuse the content in the repository.

Are the conclusions supported by the data?

Somewhat supported

The discussion contextualized the many limitations of this analysis and the different relevant dimensions that were not addressed in this study, which I find very positive about the manuscript. On the contrary, the study conclusion in the abstract, main manuscript, and even the title is very strong and does not make mention of the limitations, which feels umbalanced. I think the authors could tone down the conclusions or at least add a couple more sentences in the conclusion to explicitly contextualize the findings with the study limitations. Support for the conclusions could be improved by expanding this analysis to broader databases as suggested earlier (Ulrichsweb, OpenAlex).

Are the data presentations, including visualizations, well-suited to represent the data?

Highly appropriate and clear

Simple tables and figure that convey the main message very clearly. Figure 1 could be improved by mentioning the unit of measurement wither in the figure legend or the figure foot.

How clearly do the authors discuss, explain, and interpret their findings and potential next steps for the research?

Somewhat clearly

Already mentioned in one of my prior comments.

Is the preprint likely to advance academic knowledge?

Moderately likely

I take these results with much reserve due to the poor representation of journals in the epidemiological field. Using broader databases will help improve the likelihood of this analysis being used for future research and to change policies.

Would it benefit from language editing?

No

The English language is clear and understandable. This is sufficient for academic communication.

Would you recommend this preprint to others?

Yes, but it needs to be improved

Is it ready for attention from an editor, publisher or broader audience?

No, it needs a major revision

Competing interests

The author declares that they have no competing interests.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The author declares that they did not use generative AI to come up with new ideas for their review.