Yet again I have encountered what I call one of the silliest reasons for rejecting a paper – it is not complex or mysterious enough!

No it was not one of my papers but it has happened to two different sets of authors I know.

May I ask editors and reviewers what is wrong with clear straightforward and comprehensible writing in our papers??

One senior academic who is an editor at a major journal actually believes that scholarly reading should be ” hard work.” Excuse me, I thought doing research is hard work but I did not think we needed to make reading the results of those labours difficult.

The worst thing is that these folks are so certain of their position that no amount of talking with them will change their minds.

But maybe if I find a complex and difficult way to write about it they might listen! Nah!!!!!