What should be done if a paper's decision is accept, but the copyeditor identifies a potential technical issue?

Question

This question has been in the back of my mind since it happened many years ago. A paper was submitted to a not-very-good journal, and the process was:

• Paper shown to editorial board member, who says she is too busy to review it, but recommends her postdoc instead (she possibly confused the role of the editor and reviewer).
• Paper shown to postdoc. Postdoc recommends revision.
• Paper revised.
• Postdoc recommends acceptance, paper accepted.
• During copyediting, the copyeditor comes to you (a senior editor in the publisher) with the following issue. One of the plots has four data points, through which the authors have drawn a line. Problem is, with only four data points, the authors could have drawn any of several lines through the data. They would fit less well, but they would still superficially fit the data (see image below; the blue line is the line the authors drew and the red one is the one pointed out by the copyeditor). Given that we know almost nothing about the subject of the paper, what do we do now?

The obvious possibilities are:

1. Ask the editorial board member. Problem is she didn't make the decision.
2. Ask the postdoc. He has already recommended acceptance.
3. Ask the authors directly to revise the paper. It doesn't seem like a particularly difficult issue to address - just add more data points. However, we have no topic expertise to judge the revision (or to even tell if "add more data points" is the right way to handle the issue). If the authors say "we do not need more data points because ...", we are stumped too.
4. Do nothing and proceed as normal. This avoids the issue of potentially rejecting an already-accepted paper, which is unpleasant for everyone. On the other hand, if the paper actually should be rejected, then this seems irresponsible.

We wound up doing #3, the authors added a couple of sentences explaining why there are only four data points, and we didn't encounter any problems after publication. Still, I'm wondering if any of the other options are better.

Answer 1

I am on an editorial board for a journal. In my experience, the editorial board is like a team, trying to make the journal as strong as possible. This involves helping each other make correct decisions, advertising the journal, encouraging good submissions, etc.

In a case like the OP describes, I would say it's perfectly fine for one member of the editorial board (with permission from the one who officially handled the submission) to get in touch with the authors and ask them to clarify the issue that was found, i.e., option (3). In this case, the authors adding a sentence explaining that they want the best fit line (identified by residual sum of squares) would probably be enough.

I can't imagine the authors being too upset at being asked to do one last thing at the "proofs" stage of the process. They are already going to be asked to check typo fixes, etc. I think authors also understand that editors seek to make the paper better, and take their suggestions/questions accordingly.