I know a PhD student who recently had his paper on applied cryptography rejected because one the reviewers claimed that it was "the solution was too simple and the notation used was more than necessary". It was accepted by the second reviewer. However, both the student's supervisors thought it was a very well-written paper worthy of being accepted at the journal it was submitted to.
I have always thought that especially in cryptography, schemes should be easy to understand and use, and their unbreakability should rely on a given primitive rather than the complexity of the scheme. It should be noted that the reviewer that rejected it admitted the scheme was sound, applicable to a current area of interest, solved a problem in the area, and advanced knowledge in the area as well.
So why is it that with cryptography, where it makes sense to make schemes easy to understand (but built correctly around a primitive that is hard to break) and at the same time described precisely enough to analyse accurately, that people want something more complicated instead?
