Getting published (the dreaded R&R)
So, you’ve managed to get your manuscript submitted, it wasn’t desk rejected or rejected by the reviewers (💃), but now you must work through the reviewer comments. R&R’s, or revise and resubmits, are accomplishments that you should celebrate. Your project, and manuscript, adds something to the literature, it just needs some help to make sure that readers fully appreciate what you did.
Simultaneously, reviewer comments are tough. No one likes to have their work critiqued. When thinking back to some of my first reviews I felt embarrassed by comments pointing out editorial oversights. I felt angry about comments that suggested the reviewer didn’t read what was written. I was disappointed by comments where the reviewer didn’t share my excitement about the project’s contribution.
One of the things that’s helped me greatly over time is another mindset shift. It’s easy to get discouraged and feel badly about reviewer comments. But rather than thinking about them as a personal attack on me and my ideas, I started thinking of reviewers as an extension of my research team who wanted to see my work published. Because really at the end of the day that’s what we’re all trying to do. Contribute to science and get our work out into the world.
With that mindset shift in place, how do we tackle those comments (💪). I categorize reviewer comments into three buckets: “No brainers”, “Misunderstandings”, and “Nopes”.
1. No brainers – These are the easiest to fix. These include things like typos, word choices, and journal style matters. They require no thinking on your part, just fix them and move on. These represent a smaller portion of the comments you can expect (if you have a lot of these, I suggest some additional editing and reviewing by your internal team before submission – the fastest way to anger an editor or reviewer and get your work rejected is to submit something with lots of proof-reading errors).
2. Misunderstandings – These are comments that reflect a misunderstanding by the reader. When you first read them as the author you might find yourself saying, “Did they even read this [manuscript], [section], or [paragraph]?” However, these comments reflect an important gap. There are a couple of ways to approach these comments. The first is just to make the suggested fix. Sometimes they are that easy.
The second, and more likely way, involves putting yourself in the shoes of the reviewer and seeing how and where your argument lost the reader. Sometimes this happens in your background section because you didn’t fully explain the theoretical perspective or assumptions you were making. Sometimes this happens in the methods section because you didn’t fully explain an analytic technique you were using or outline how you were finding participants.
You don’t necessarily have to do exactly what the reviewer is asking, but you do have to address the underlying issue that caused the comment to begin with. In my experience these represent the bulk of the comments you could receive.
3. Nopes – These are comments that are generally outside of the scope of your project. Often, they include requests to collect new or different data, or in some cases fundamentally change your research question. After reflecting on the quality of your project (because we all know sometimes “full” papers need to be research briefs) I find it best to simply reiterate the purpose of your paper and carefully review your work to ensure there is no place where you have accidently contradicted yourself. In my experience these represent the smallest portion of comments.
At the end of the day, reviewers stand between you and publication. Getting the comments resolved, improving your manuscript and your science is a small price to pay. The double check offered by peer-review is also so important in our current moment when science is under attack. I am grateful for colleagues around the world who give their time, energy, and brain power to help my science (and all our science) be better.
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