It’s quite odd. Despite a supposed crisis of overburdened peer reviewers, many editors of the elite journal seem unwilling to make even basic decisions on their own, without coming back to reviewers repeatedly.
This summer I have reviewed several papers where I have said something to the effect of “the authors have addressed my concerns and I encourage publication of the paper in its present form”, only to have the paper come back to me for a third or fourth time for further review.
