I trust many of this blog's readers have something of a "love-hate" relationship with peer-review. On the one hand, peer-review aims to counteract bias in evaluating work for publication–and when one receives thoughtful, detailed comments by peer-reviewers, it can really improve one's work (I, for one, owe an immense debt of gratitude to some reviewers, as well editors). On the other hand, peer-review is often an incredibly frustrating process–with annoyances ranging from absurdly long wait times, to absurdly high rejection-rates, to unhelpful, unqualified, and/or meanspirited reviewers, to unethical Google reviewing, to referee comments that require one to turn an otherwise beautiful paper into a monstrosity (see below). 
Anyway, while I have suggested a number of reforms before that I think might improve the process, peer-review will likely always remain a very imperfect system. What, then, can we do (besides complain or push for reforms)?
Well, one thing we can try to do is comfort ourselves a bit, by examining how researchers–including the most famous researchers in history!–have always faced these issues. As the saying goes, misery loves company. So, let's see how some incredibly successful people have shared in our misery. 🙂
I've shared Jason Stanley's story before:
I have never had good luck with peer reviewed journals. Around 2/3 of the papers on my CV have been accepted blind peer review, but only four or five of those have been accepted to the first journal to which they have been submitted, almost all of them as R&Rs first (and one of those was a neuroscience journal). My 2002 paper "Modality and What is Said" was finished in 1996 and rejected from 11 journals. And yesterday's desk rejection without comments was the fifth desk rejection without comments I have received since 2011…Four of my papers that were rejected from multiple top journals subsequently became among the 20 most cited papers in those very journals since 2000[.]
That's a fun story–and I've heard more than a few just like it straight from the mouths of other well-known philosophers. Sort of comforting, I think. But you think that's fun? As I mentioned in a post the other day, I recently got my hands on "The Great Physicists: The Life and Times of Leading Physicists from Galileo to Hawking"…and some of the historical examples of failures of peer review are priceless!
Here are just a few examples:
Robert Mayer (founder of thermodynamics): "Mayer submitted his 1841 paper to…Annalen der Physik [editorial note: physics' #1 journal!]. It was not accepted for publication, or even returned with an acknowledgement…Mayer submitted his 1845 paper to…Annalen; it was apparently rejected by an assistant editor, apparently after a cursory reading…In the end, [Mayer] published the paper privately, and hoped to gain recognition by distributing it widely. But beyond a few brief journal listings, the paper, Mayer's magnum opus, went unnoticed." (The Great Physicists, pp. 54-5)
James Joule (discovered the nature of heat): "When Joule submitted a summary of his friction experiments for publication, he closed the paper with three conclusions…The referee who reported on the paper…requested that the third conclusion be suppressed…[In addition,] Joule's first electrochemistry paper was rejected for publication by the Royal Society, except as an abstract. Arthur Schuster reported that, when he asked Joule what his reaction was when this important paper was rejected, Joule's reply was characteristic: 'I was not surprised. I could imagine those gentlemen sitting around a table in London saying to each other: 'What good can come out of a town [Manchester] where they dine in the middle of the day?'.'") (ibid: 69)
Hermann Helmholtz (provided mechanical foundation for thermodynamics): "Helmholtz submitted [his] paper for publication to…Annalen, and like Mayer five years earlier, received a rejection. Once again an author with important things to say about the energy concept had to resort to private publication." (ibid: 73-4)
And philosophers? Here is what we learn in Ray Monk's Wittgenstein biography on Wittgenstein's attempts to publish the Tractatus:
After receiving Frege's [scathing] letter [criticizing the Tractatus, Wittgenstein] abandoned the attempt to have it published in Beitragen zur Philosophie des Deutschen Idealismus…[Wittgenstein] then told Fricker of the unsatisfactory responses he had so far had from the publishers of, respectively, Kraus, Weininger, and Frege. Finally, [Wittgenstein] got to the point: 'it occurred to me whether you might be inclined to take the thing into your protection.' If Fricker thought its publication in Der Brenner conceivable, Wittgenstein would send him the manuscript…Ficker's response was cool. He could not give a definite answer…The opinion of [Fricker's] colleague was that the work was too specialized to appear in Der Brenner…The letter threw Wittgenstein into a state of despondency. (pp. 176-9)
The moral of the story? Peer-review has always been a pain in the you-know-what, even for the very best thinkers in history. So take heart and don't be discouraged! If these folks can conquer rejection, so can we. 🙂
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