@ Dr. Sunil. Thanks for posting such important issue. I also have the same view that " The name of the authors do have a major impact in the refereeing process, also can influence the editors.". Your suggestion will not bring any results, because the blind papers are usually sent to the referees and the referees are generally not aware of the authors. The game of rejection generally takes place by the preliminary editorial screening who may be influenced by big names of researchers, research centres etc. I think if you modify your suggestion that the authors should reveal their identity at final stages and even the editors should not have the permission to know about the names or affiliations.

I agree that the question is extremely important. I also agree that decision is mostly made on the stage of internal editorial review. Most journals send for peer-review only those papers which they principally have already decided to publish. However, other may reject after peer-review as well.

How to overcome the problem? If your paper has got to reviewers and has been rejected, you are in the advantaged position compared to those who have been rejected through the internal review. You can use the reviewers' comments and submit the paper to the next journal. You probably cannot change the journal which is overwhelmed with papers which all are too good to be accepted and published.

Thanks Dr. Tatiana for the valued opinion. Now a days editors have also become smart because they generally don't give their comments. I have personally experiences such rejection on the plea that the "Our Journal Published high quality paper. Editorial Board has decided not to forward your papers to referee". What can one do when there is no detailed reason of rejection is mentioned there?

I agree that this is the most frustrating way things can develop.

From the point of view of editors, if they see that they will not publish the paper it is natural not to overwhelm their reviewers with the work their journal in fact does not need.

From the point of view of the author, especially if you wait months and years for their decision while your results become outdated, this is intolerable.

The only thing you can do in this situation is to send your paper to the other journal and then the other. Having a list of such journals in advance makes the process less frustrating. But at the end of this list you need to have a journal where your papers will be accepted after all.

This was one of the reasons why we established TCPHEE journal (see http://andreevin.narod.ru/journal)

To add a point to our discussion...

Recently we submitted a paper on aspirin to Nature Chemistry... The editorial board rejected the paper without even sending it for refereeing. We submitted it to RSC Chemical Science (IF: 7.5), got accepted without any corrections. The paper appeared as research highlight in RSC Chemistry World. Then Nature Chemistry editorial board approached us to seek permission to publish it as a research highlight. So from this one can assume how negligent was the editor in rejecting our paper even without sending it for peer reviewing...

Having read, all the above comments, it seems very essential to reveal the authors name only after a manuscript has been accepted for publication. it helps the scientific community to read the qulaity works and to start their research work based on the quality publications.

This is similar to conducting a double blind clinical trial for avoiding bias in the clinical outcome.

Thanks to Dr. Sunil for having started an important discussion which definitely has an impact on the scientific publications.

@ Sunil. Dont be worried because this is not uncommon phenomenon. Perhaps this is the reason the majority of the journals believe in "blind review". Rejection of your paper is at typical example of "blind Review"., because only a blind can reject an excellent paper.

Besides the authors' perspective, there exists the editor's perspective. Just imagine a high impact journal which receives dousens of papers a day. Definitely, they are not able to read each attentively. So some papers are rejected just because the editor was too tired when your paper was reviewed internally.

Does this make sense?

Somebody is not doing science and submitting the results to journals to test their luck, based on the tiredness or the ego clash of the editors with their wives... They are being submitted to journals to seek their objective comments not to seek their subjective intuitions. Once the journal level goes up, their responsibility also increases, since power comes with responsibilities.

You are right. This is about how things should be. However, how they are in reality sometimes is more important. I am not telling that these editors behave in a good way. I just hope that seeing another perspective will lead to less frustration.

@ Tatiana , You have summarized this discussion that " I am not telling that these editors behave in a good way". I believe editors should either dispose of their responsibilities in letter and spirit or leave the position who can accept this challenge and deal with dozens of papers each day.