I have encountered another weird situation as a referee. A couple of months ago, I submitted a referee report for an article, asking for major revisions. (This is theoretical physics, in which getting only a single referee report for published paper is not uncommon, even in top journals.) Last week, I was contacted by the journal again, with the news that the authors had submitted a substantially revised version, and the editor wanted me to review it again. (The journal involved here is not a particularly prestigious one, but it is generally a respectable one and has been published by World Scientific for several decades.)

So I went to the journal's online platform and started looking at the referee reports, the authors' replies, and the updated manuscript. However, I quickly realized that both referee reports were by me! More precisely, an editor had split my lengthy report into two, so that it looked like the journal had gotten opinions from two scientists. My comments were chopped up and parceled out between the two separate reports, with a little bit of added rewriting so that each one made sense on its own, more or less. (I was also annoyed that the editor added to one of "my" reports a suggestion that the authors check their English using the free version of Grammarly—something I would never in a million years suggest!)

So what should I do? The paper is actually greatly improved and can probably be published with little or no further editing needed. I don't really want to penalize the authors. On the other hand, I am pretty angry at the editor(s). A colleague suggested that I should just write to the editors, calling them out on their dishonesty and announcing that I will not be refereeing for them in the future. I suppose that's a reasonable approach to take, but it seems harsh. Is there an easier tack I can take, perhaps?

Or—on the off chance—does anyone think that what the editor did was actually fine, and that I am overreacting?