A question about rejected journal submissions, similar results, and discrepancies between the order of submission and the order of publication Today I just received the decision of my paper from a journal. The paper was submitted last December and my paper is kind of long (about 40 pages), so I think it's reasonable to take such a long time to receive the decision. Unfortunately, the paper was rejected. And I only received a very short report from a single referee (normally this journal requires two referees) saying that the same result of Prof. B using almost exactly same technique was proved in another paper which was published in another journal, journal A. Therefore the referee decided to reject my paper. So I try to look at this paper from journal A. What was surprising to me is that I have submitted my paper to journal A before I submitted my paper to the present journal and was rejected by journal A. Journal A thinks that the result of Prof. B is good which deserved publication in the journal. However, my paper was rejected. When I look at the submission date of the paper of Prof. B to journal A, I find that I submitted my paper to journal A before Prof. B submitted his paper. What is more surprising to me is that I check the decision letter of my paper from journal A, it seems to me that they even didn't send my paper to the referee to read it, and the paper was rejected within 3 weeks. 
Now it seems to me that it's very difficult to get my paper published. So here are questions: Have you ever experienced this? If yes, what did you do to get your paper published? Or did you just give up? Actually I just got my PhD few years ago, and I think maybe that's one of the reason my paper haven't been treated seriously when I submitted to journal A. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!
 A: Paul, One thing you may try to do is to send a letter to the editor of Journal B appealing the decision. From your description it appears that you submitted the paper to Journal B at about the same time as the other person submitted his paper to journal A so you can mention this fact and ask that your paper will be refereed on its own merits and not be rejected just based on the appearance of the other paper.  
Of course, in order to be accepted your paper should be found to be correct and it is also possible that there are other distinctions between the two papers that contributed to the outcome. 
A: The closest situation I saw was when a graduate student $X$ of a colleague $Y$ of mine started to work on some problem, solved it, but was very slow with writing the solution down. During that long and painstaking process, professor $Z$ sent to $Y$ his preprint with essentially the same result and proof. The situation was somewhat awkward but they finally agreed on $X$ and $Z$ publishing a joint paper. 
That all could actually be sort of anticipated because both works were just applications of the methods from a paper that appeared shortly before this story to a slightly different problem. 
Morals:
1) I do not think that this situation (when several people jump on the same recent idea and try to squeeze more from it at the same time) is unusual and it may be one of the main reasons why independent but nearly identical works are produced almost simultaneously. So, if your situation is like that, then it is ordinary rather than exceptional.  
2) The submission dates do not really tell who was there first in any reliable way.
3) It never hurts to negotiate a bit with "the other guy" directly and see if the infamous "priority problem" can be solved peacefully to everyone's satisfaction. 
4) If you really want to make a priority claim, it is a good idea to write a decent draft and put it in the public domain quickly (arXiv is the most obvious choice though you may also want to send it to a few experts who might be interested in your result in your opinion). 
5) There is no point in having 2 nearly identical publications in (almost) the same journal or anywhere. 
At last, I have to say that if you are any good, one unpublished paper won't kill you and if you aren't, one published paper will not save you, so whatever happens with this paper, take it easy and don't start a fight or, worse, a crusade. I doubt you'll be able to publish it anywhere once an almost identical work has appeared in print. The upside of it is that you now know someone else (B) who is interested in the things you are interested in. Try to make the best of it.
As to the open-close tag-of-war over this question, I agree that there is no mathematical content in it but, since it directly relates to the "social side" of our craft and is non-trivial, I'd let it stay. 
