It's not that unpublished papers remain on Prof. Reza Ghadiri's desk forever. Given enough time and pressure from group members whose work is in question, Dr. Ghadiri does submit papers for publication in scientific journals. Rather, I think, it is the tendency for it to happen later rather than sooner that fueled the meme of Journal of Reza's Desk.
1. One year, one paper
A postdoc spent about a year visiting Reza's office nearly every day to discuss a single paper. It took a lot of time and effort to prepare, but that manuscript went out for publication. Reportedly, it was first submitted to Science, but was rejected. It was published in Angewandte Chemie.
2. An ultimatum
A fellow graduate student had several papers on the line. He told Dr. Ghadiri about his intent to leave and work for another supervisor. That is, if Reza continued to put off moving forward with those papers. Judging by the recent publication history, the issue has been resolved.
3. Blast from the past
Professor M. Reza Ghadiri has two papers in 2008 that catch my eye: one in ChemBioChem, another in Small. Except for Dr. Ghadiri himself, none of the authors had been members of the Ghadiri group for years. I know because I was there since August 2003. So, after five years or a little more, but the articles were published. Why in 2008? Around that time I heard that Reza was busy working on a paper by a former lab member, who asked to (finally) publish it, because he needed it to support his tenure application. It might have been just a rumor. But the first author on both papers actually is a professor now.
I am unable to read minds. So I can't pretend to know the real reasons for why Reza is not the fastest man on earth to publish. The only word about it I heard directly from him was "busy". Which is hardly an explanation: who isn't? But let me put it this way.
Dr. Ghadiri is a well-established, successful and ambitious scientist. His laboratory is funded better than most academic labs out there. The research done by his group is interdisciplinary, multi-directional and is based on off-the-wall and outside-the-box ideas. It's the type of work that could, in principle, and sometimes does, in practice, get into Nature or Science.
And if I were in this kind of situation, I would be doing something similar. Consciously and purposefully. My desk would have its own journal too. Next post is all about the reasons why.
comments for this post
I've been a student of science for over 10 years. Most of that time I worked in academic research labs. The last and the longest time – in the laboratory of Dr. 
Ah, the famous "posthumous" publications that somehow emerge from a lab *years* after the "authors" leave. Good job on calling this kind of bad behavior out. In my experience, these seem to come about from the following scenarios:
1. The one you cite, where a previous grad student is up for a job/promotion and begs until the PI sends it. In these cases, I think the PI just holds on to stuff to enjoy the power trip. It is sad that so many people are stuck in a situation where they need a PI for something like this. The paper you seem (from pubmed) to be referring to is about "DNA logic gates", I would hope I never find myself in a position where my career depended on a paper like that.
2. Similar to 1, but it's PIs favorite chosen who hasn't published anything since the freebies he had in her/his old boss's lab. In these cases the PI seems peculiarly vested in maintaining the image of his/her old student.
3. The lab sycophant needs papers, and the PI grants (often first) authorship to something collecting dust on his desk. The previous first author often finds out very late in the process winds up infuriated, but sadly, needs the paper so he/she can't do much.
This type of thing is generally bad for students as the value of the work to them (especially the primary author) is usually nearly zero years after they have left, but the PI benefits by being able to keep the worker tied to him/her without cost.
Speaking of authorship, and favoritism. I've seen a student do a lot of work on a project only to be "accidentally" omitted from the author list on the paper. Reza let the other guy take all the credit. Unbelievable as it was, they called it "a misunderstanding".