Through
barrapunto I arrive at the
Computer.org page on rejection letters. I have had my fair share of them, some quite recently (last week, in fact). And, of course, being in the same business, I've caused through reviewing a good amount of them too, I guess.
Peer reviewing is a problem, and will be increasingly more so. It's quite difficult to find three or four reviewers willing to volunteer (no payment involved, never) a bit of their precious time to review papers that are badly written, badly thinked out, or both. Sometimes it's not quite like that, but since fields are becoming more and more narrow, it's almost impossible to find a reviewer that is completely familiar with the technique and applicationso and methodology used in a paper.
Besides, rejection is becoming more common. Available journal slots are not growing as fast as the number of papers produced by researchers. Neural nets researchers have grown exponentially, but there are just half a dozen of neural net journals (even less so, if you take into account impact factor). It's even worse for evolutionary computation: 3 journals, one of them without impact index.
It all boils down to the fact that there will be more and more "we are sorry to inform you... " letters, I am sorry to inform you all.
