Have referees rejected some of the most-cited articles of all times?

In this article a quantitative study is reported on the resistance that scientists may encounter when they do innovative work or when they attempt to publish articles that later become highly cited. A set of 205 commentaries by authors of some of the most‐cited papers of all times have been examined in order to identify those articles whose authors encountered difficulty in getting his or her work published. There are 22 commentaries (10.7%) in which authors mention some difficulty or resistance in doing or publishing the research reported in the article. Three of the articles which had problems in being published are the most cited from their respective journals. According the authors' commentaries, although sometimes referees' negative evaluations can help improve the articles, in other instances referees and editors wrongly rejected the highly cited articles. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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