I published my first article in an academic journal back in 1993 -- a very memorable moment! Writing for journals and submitting to journals is a big part of academic life, and one in which a sometimes strange interdependency is played out: the journals need authors just as the authors need journals. I've since published in about 30 academic journals (some more "academic" than others) and have had many different kinds of experience with them.
Over the last year I've experienced a remarkable contrast. In 2020 I wrote two, slightly-related articles concerned with the appearance of New Zealand in English literature in the 1840s. In the autumn, I sent one to the Journal of New Zealand Literature, and the other to the Journal of New Zealand and Pacific Studies. The contrast was remarkable. With the first, I had to write to the editor four times before she even acknowledged that I'd submitted something. And then, six months later, when I started asking when I was likely to hear from her (having, in the interim, heard nothing), there was no reply. I felt very skeptical as to whether anything was happening at all. Eventually, after nine months, I wrote to say I was withdrawing the article -- even that failed to get a reply! With the Journal of New Zealand and Pacific Studies things could not have been more different. The submission was immediately acknowledged, in a very friendly way, and despite the challenges posed by Covid 19, there was a clear editorial procedure that I was guided through. The article, slightly revised, was accepted in April. As of now, I've had eight emails from the editor.
The real takeaway here has been the impact an editor's personality and sense of professional standards has on a journal. Most academic journals are not large-scale operations, so the editor has a huge influence on how things get done. Often there will be very little accountability. My worst experience with a journal came some years ago with the Journal of Popular Music Studies. It's a long, in many ways unbelievable story, but in essence one of the two editors wrote a very dismissive report on my submission, but claimed that this dismissive report had come from a third party referee. This of course was a total corruption of the "peer review" process most journals follow. I complained to the publisher, who initially supported the editor. I then, for the first and only time, complained to COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) a wonderful organisation that tries to ensure ethical standards are followed in journal publication. They eventually obtained an admission that the editor had been at fault, but it was a lot of hard work to get to that stage, and of course in the end as an author you've proved a moral point, but not actually got your work published.
However, journals do need authors! So it's important that we support those journals that treat authors well, while trying to withdraw support from journals that treat authors badly.