In light of the pressure to publish felt by most investigators, it's only natural for them to view with some trepidation the system by which journals evaluate papers. Cloaked in confidentiality as it generally is, the process of refereeing can seem altogether mystifying, like some sort of cabalistic rite. But in reality, there's nothing particularly mysterious--or sinister--about what happens to a manuscript once the hopeful author deposits it in the mail.
Editors and reviewers say they approach their jobs not as authors' adversaries, but as colleagues. Stanley Brown, an editor at the journal Physical Review, speaks for many when he says, "We bend over backwards for authors."
Statistics bear this out. While an interdisciplinary publication like Science may reject about 80 percent of the manuscripts it receives, most journals are considerably less picky. In fact, a 1971 study by Columbia University sociologists Harriet Zuckerman and Robert Merton found that major ...
