The peer-review, which is the dominant method to evaluate scientific research papers doesn't represent, in my opinion, a fair system. Some reviewers don't read the paper itself, but they concentrate on the author's name and affiliation; they try to find all the information about him/her to judge his/her manuscript depending on his/her religion, race, or citizenship. Another group of reviewers, work on the paper in hunting mode!! he/she tries to find any minor problem in the paper to reject it! The third group has already prepared some paragraphs which are written in general formula (they could be used for any paper); then instead of reviewing the paper they copy and paste those sacred paragraphs to "reject the paper" !! The main problem is: all these types of irresponsible reviewers are not really supervised by a good editor. Unfortunately, most of the editors, don't read the reviewers' evaluation text which should be written to give all the negative comments and the positive features related to the evaluated paper, but they go directly to adopt the reviewers' decisions. Please, if you are a reviewer, try to do your job professionally and transparently. By the way, I don't have a recently rejected paper, but I see how a lot of reviewers work. Finally, the international journals are invited to make their final decision about the given paper in two months "at most". In other words, the reviewing system should be changed.
Dear Colleague,
I am not sure what is a purpose of your post?
1. If you ask a question, it must not consist of an answer - which is the case here!
2. What you call "peer review" is a simple reviewing process whether done by other academics or not. There is a system called BLIND (double) peer-review which was created just to avoid shortcomings described by you.
Best wishes
1. I give my opinion and ask the others to give their opinions from their own experiences; I ask the question to trigger the discussion!
2. Double-blind reviewing process; a lot of international journals with high impact factors don't follow this system. The name and the affiliation of the authors are mostly given to the reviewers. In any case, showing the name and the affiliation of the authors is not the unique drawback of the current reviewing processes, as I have clarified in the upper-mentioned paragraph. Most of the reviewers are volunteers, therefore, we don't find a standard policy that can evaluate or "justify" their decisions; i.e. their reports and decisions are sometimes temperaments more than professional.
My experience of peer reviews has generally been constructive, Constructive critical comments have generally helped to refine and clarify my arguments or sent me down unexplored avenues which have enhanced my own research
An increasing number of peer review assessments are done with name and institution of author removed. Wonder if the problem you describe is related to particular disciplines
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