Could that also be because he reviewed the papers first and made sure they were in a suitable state to publish? Or you think it really was just the name alone, and if you had published without him they would not have been accepted?
He only skimmed them- scientists at his level are more like a CEO than the stereotype of a scientist- with multiple large labs, startups, and speaking engagements every few days. He trusted me to make sure the papers were good- and they were, but his name made the difference between getting into a good journal in the field, and a top “high impact” journal that usually does not consider the topic area popular enough to accept papers on, regardless of the quality or content of the paper. At some level, high impact journals are a popularity contest- to maintain the high citation rate, they only publish from people in large popular fields, as having more peers means more citations.
