The main criticism of the reviewers was: not enough citations and discussion of relation to other work.
I’d call this a failure mode (not valuing new work), if that weren’t a useful way of operating for someone to do, if they also accepted things that are nothing but discussion of other work—specifically, distillation.
I’d call this a failure mode (not valuing new work), if that weren’t a useful way of operating for someone to do, if they also accepted things that are nothing but discussion of other work—specifically, distillation.