[danieltillett]

This is the way "peer review" works. It is basically random. I have always found it comforting whenever I had a paper rejected as I would know it was nothing to do with the quality of my work. I would fix any of the typos found by the reviewers (you always get a spelling nazi as one of reviewers) and send it out again unchanged. I only have had one paper rejected twice and it was accepted unchanged on the third attempt.

[IndianAstronaut]

Isn't this why Mendeley and EndNote exist? Just change up the citation formatting and resubmit to a different journal until one accepts your work.

[danieltillett]

Yes :)

My favourite peer review story is when I submitted one on my articles to the top journal in my field at the time (Appied and Enviromental Microbiogy). It came back with the usual peer review trivial changes (cite this irrelevant paper of mine,etc) which I did (this nearly always easier than arguing with the reviewers). The editor made a mistake and instead of sending the updated manuscript out to the original reviewers, they sent it out to a new lot of reviewers. What was funny about the whole exercise was the second set of reviewers called the first set of reviewers idiots and told me to change everything back.

[Natsu]

They always have to find some way to leave their mark.

[danieltillett]

This is true, but there is always exceptions. The second paper I published I sent off to the journal and after a couple of months I had not heard anything (this was in the physical paper days where you had to mail everything). My supervisor decided to call the editor to ask what was happening. The editor said "oh we published it last month". The whole paper had gone straight through without a single change. This of course was the last time I ever had a paper accepted like this :)