Philip Ball reporting for Nature News on a new study about the scientific impact of papers that are initially rejected:
Just had your paper rejected? Don’t worry — that might boost its ultimate citation tally. An excavation of scientific papers' usually hidden prepublication trajectories from journal to journal has found that papers published after having first been rejected elsewhere receive significantly more citations on average than ones accepted on first submission.
The peer-review process is far from perfect, but I feel that every paper I have been involved with has improved as a result of the referee comments. It can be frustrating at times, but the quality of a manuscript can dramatically increase with the (mostly) useful feedback reviewers provide.