My favorite is when two reviewers think your paper is awesome and a great contribution in the field, and the rest didn't really seem to get the point of it and think that it's a waste of space. I took some solace in that the ones who appreciated it were the ones who actually did research in that speciality... but all in all, I'm not too sad that I probably won't have to publish one at my current job any time soon.

"So… yeah, it can feel like being beaten, repeatedly. For sure."

I suppose in the same way that for Johnny Depp giving interviews can feel like being raped?

Grad Student sent paper to journal.  GS followed up at 3 months, 6 months, and 8 months, with an assurance from the editor that it would be reviewed soon.  At 12 months, Advisor (a co-author) emails editor to ask what holdup is.  Editor claims the paper was never received.  Advisor forwards all emails between GS and editor, indicates that the paper was most certainly received, and that editor's behavior was unacceptable.  Editor says she will send out paper to reviewers right away.  Two days later, Advisor receives emailed rejection letter from journal.  Five years later, GS is still so annoyed by incident, she posts story of it on random blog.

In most fields the review process is not nearly as bad as the poster suggests.  Biology papers are usually reviewed within 6 weeks, and accept-with-minor-corrections is a very common result.   Papers are generally only outright rejected when they are really trash (or when they have been submitted to the wrong journal).  Those papers may indeed takes years to find places that will take them.

It's a Catch-22.  No one enjoys the peer review process.  As you say, it's brutal, drawn out, and soul sapping.   But on the other hand, the whole professionalization of the sciences and our knowledge authority comes from obtuse rituals such as this.  For better or worse, without well cordoned discursive spaces (that sadly act as a bottleneck for academic work), we'd have no way to distinguish well formed and well INformed opinions from the musings of a random observer.  In sum, peer review is a necessary evil if you want academic journals, academic journals are a necessary evil if you want academics to be professionalized, and professionalization is a necessary evil if you want your PhD opinion to count more than the person on the street.  Of course, that could be the amor fati talking. 

 It's worth mentioning the Sociology Journals Wiki: http://www.wikihost.org/w/socijournals/start

It's got info/dirt from submitters AND editors on their experiences with any given journal.  I actually heard about the website during an ASA Panel that featured Lisa and Gwen, and have found it interesting, helpful, AND depressing! 

What sucks is when a group of "peer reviewers" turn out to be all on the same team, and they make it a point to block your paper from ever getting published, despite how good it is. The question becomes, who are the peer-reviewers? Do they have any financial connections with organizations that need to have certain information suppressed? Do they have a personal agenda to publish/suppress information? There comes a point where "peer review" becomes quite simply a boys/girls club. Not very scientific at all.

2007 April - Paper presented at conference
2007 May - paper revised and submitted to journal
... multiple follow-ups met with silence
2008 Sept - email from editor saying that the journal moved and could we resubmit
2008 Sept - resubmit
... more follow-ups
2009 Oct - Accept with revisions - received
2009 Oct - changes made and resubmitted within 2 weeks
... more follow-ups
2010 June - Accept with revisions - AGAIN since they sent it back out to new peer reviewers.  Most important comment:  We were missing some of the more recent work on the topic.....DUH....
2010 June - Turned it around within a week
2010 Oct - Request for me to review for them
2011 March - Accepted, supposedly
2011 June - Another request for me to review for them
2011 October - Awaiting batch assignment.  Still no publication date

My adviser and I made a bet in 2009 that I would defend and graduate before the thing was published.  At this rate I might RETIRE before that happens....

Once I had a paper rejected for publication from an anthology, and then the editors wrote back to apologize and say that they'd intended to accept it.

Another time I had a paper accepted to a conference panel, and when I wrote back to ask about travel logistics, they apologized and said that they'd meant to reject it.

Once had a paper turned down because the action editor, in more flowery terms, basically said they didn't believe the result. Nevermind the methods and extensive statistical analyses, I have to hope the message that my paper ultimately supports is one that can be easily swallowed. 

Frankly, this is a problem in several areas of social science; I also do work for a woman who does dietary research (essentially unraveling why diets don't work) and she's had work rebuffed because it's difficult to wrap your mind around the concept, when the desire to BELIEVE the opposite is so strong. (The editor wrote that they believed small, but purposeful dietary changes over time made a difference; regardless of whether they do or don't and it's arguable, that wasn't what the paper addressed.)

I'm appreciative of the process for making me a more vigilant scientist, but facing down a firing squad because your results aren't intuitive (or sometimes even, just aren't pleasant) is a pain.

After submitting an article I waited a few months to get a rejection back that indicated I had a problem with using passive voice too much... the examples given by the reviewer were all active voice.  What do you do with that?

Even more importantly and more frightening, I think this cartoon also represents the job application process that I am in the middle of.  Many of the job committees are receiving hundreds of applications.  Many of the thick application packets sent out never receive any response at all.  How's that for encouraging? You know, at this point, I look forward to the day when I can fear the harrowing journey of an article being reviewed.  At least I will have a job.

Worth pointing out that the real travesty is that a lot of journal publishers are for-profit and make pretty good money (e.g. Elsevier makes something along the lines of three billion dollars a year in profits) selling access to those papers to university library systems etc., all while those who do the real work involved (authors and reviewers) make absolutely nothing off the endeavor.  Yeah, okay, it pads up your CV.  But companies like Elsevier and T&F are making billions off that labor.

I once submitted a paper to over 8 different journals -- and was rejected by 7 of them.  I kept being rejected with comments like "this was a well-researched and interesting paper, but it isn't quite on our topic".  Darn interdisciplinary papers -- it can be so hard to find them a home!

There is another way of looking at the peer review process: the reviewers are typically senior members of the currently reigning paradigm: they rule what is accepted  and what is   rejected; they are the Gatekeepers, they are the Enforcers of the current orthodoxy.  If you want to thrive in your career, you had better stay within the reigning orthodoxy.  I recently gave a talk on the topic "The Comfort and Tyranny of Paradigms".  (I am not a novice; I have published 7 books and quite a few articles; but I know the culture of science -- it is not a secret plot to make life difficult; but it does enforce a stringent orthodoxy, in every science, not just social science.) 
P.S. The same Enforcers guide grant applications, academic promotions,  and book publishing.Fred Emil Katz

My husband has gotten quite a few rejections that are actually accept with revisions in disguise. It seems the journals want to have short acceptance times and this helps make the stats in their favor, because these "new" submissions can be accepted so quickly.

Are you tired by peer-review process? Read that: http://www.strategy-of-innovation.com/article-open-peer-review-is-finally-available-for-scientific-publications-84928130.html

Are you tired by peer-review process? Read that: http://www.strategy-of-innovation.com/article-open-peer-review-is-finally-available-for-scientific-publications-84928130.html

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