The material published in this “Discussion”—and the very reason for which we decided to publish it—requires a clarification on the part of the journal Management; therefore, I advise readers to peruse this foreword before embarking in the task of studying the often polemical statements and counter-statements contained in the Seibert and Rees paper, in the Diesendorf and Fthenakis et al. critique, and in the replies by Seibert and Rees.
Let me first reiterate that at Energies, in the over 12 years of my tenure as EiC, we have consistently made every effort to adopt a completely “unbiased publishing policy”. This means that any scientific opinion—controversial as it may be—on any topic falling within our journal’s scope is peer-reviewed with the utmost attention to its interest for the energy-conversion-systems community, to its scientific merit, to the methods of the research and to the appropriateness of the citations, conclusions, ethics, and academic style. Our record in this matter is immaculate and a source of great pride for us.
For a series of reasons, the original Seibert and Rees manuscript (S&R in the following) slipped through our system in spite of the warning signals given by two of our reviewers: it would be useless to explain the technical reasons of such a mistake here, but as the Editor in Chief, in the end, it is my own responsibility to enforce our publication standards; therefore, I must begin this foreword by asking our readers and our constituency to forgive me for accepting the original manuscript without requiring the authors to make some obvious corrections (that, in light of their response reported below, I believe they would not have accepted).
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