Publishing well is key to a
successful research career yet, like many aspects of modern academic life, it
is an activity that has intensified and industrialised over recent decades. An abbreviated version of this article appeared in Times Higher Education and can be found here. The full version is offered below:
The
editors of top-ranked journals face a deluge of new submissions whilst
struggling to convince their colleagues to take on reviewing work and to do so
in a timely fashion. Rejection rates have soared and surviving 3 or 4 rounds of
the revise and resubmit cycle is an exercise in creativity and persistence. The
attitude of aspiring authors in the context might best be summarised by
Baumeister’s observation that “in view of the misanthropic psychopaths you have on your
editorial board, you need to keep sending them papers, for if they weren't
reviewing manuscripts they'd probably be out mugging old ladies or clubbing
baby seals to death."[1]
What follows is some advice on how to
survive and thrive in the land of revise and resubmit.
Have a Tantrum
If you’ve
received a revise and resubmit (R&R) the world is telling you something. If
it comes from a low-ranked and/or new journal, things are really bad. They
should be thanking you for your wonderful research and asking if you have any
friends that have papers looking for a home. If it emanates from the editorial
offices of a prestigious journal, an R&R carries confirmation of your
talent since the vast majority of poor quality submissions will have been
instantly desk rejected. Journal editors the world over long for an editorial
bot that can generate thousands of “Dear [name], thanks for your paper on
[topic] which we’ve rejected because [select from a short list of socially
polite reasons]” per hour because they currently have to draft them by hand. Logically
however, an R&R from a good journal indicates that you took a piece of
well-executed research and spent a reasonable amount of time working on version
1.0 of something that is dear to your heart. To see it eviscerated by an editor
and three reviewers is traumatic and outrage is a normal human response. Have a
tantrum, howl at the injustices, rail at the minor technical inaccuracies or
the typos littering the pages of insults masquerading as “advice”. Nothing will
change but it will get the inner toddler out of your system.
Take Time Out
Continuing the Super
Nanny theme, once you’ve had your initial tantrum, take some time out. You’ll
no doubt have been set a deadline by which the editor(s) would like to see a
revised version of your paper. Take the first week of this to get some
perspective on the situation. As an
author you need to move from a place of indignance to one of perseverance and
willingness to try, try, try again. The temptation of course, is to obsessively
read and re-read your R&R over those first few days but this tends to
further foster the heat and hurt of your initial reactions. Put the paper, the
project and the R&R to one side and do something else for a while. If you
have co-authors, form a pact to abstain from group therapy for a time but only
on the proviso that you come back together at an agreed time. Break the time
out into two phases. A few days of complete abstinence from the paper, the
anger and the worry over the consequences for your career. Then a second phase
in which you allow yourself to begin to move forward by gathering together
copies of anything that the editor or reviewers might mention in their
voluminous notes. The better the
journal, the better qualified and more experienced the reviewers. Each will
likely have noted several of their own papers as well as schools of thought,
bodies of theory or methodological traditions that they’ve used to poke holes
in your argument. The editor, motivated by the citation stats for their beloved
journal, will also likely have mentioned several things from previous issues to
which you could usefully refer.
Think Learning Opportunity
In all probability,
your R&R will have come with a cover note from the editor pointing out that
you are invited to undertake a high-risk resubmission. Don’t be despondent; few people receive a
low-risk resubmission these days even at rounds two, three or four. Instead, allow
yourself to be excited that you’re still in the game. Eventual publication is still possible and
you’ve had somewhere in the region of half a day of free consultancy from some
of the very best qualified people on the planet. An editor, who will be an exceptional scholar
and a very experienced publisher, has read your work at least twice in round
one. The first would be a relatively
quick skim read to establish that your paper was worth reviewing. The second
would be a more careful process of triangulating between the two and three
reviews that s/he received. Individual
reviewers will have spent at least an hour, and likely more, reading your paper,
thinking about it deeply and generating anywhere between a page and a paper’s
worth of commentary. What a fantastic resource.
These individuals might sound like they want to incinerate your paper
but in fact, they are merely doing what you do to every student essay that you
receive. They’re pointing out how it could be improved. Yes, they’ll have spent
a great deal of time showing where and how those improvements might occur. Yes,
it is unhelpful that they have divergent views on some things. No, they won’t
have been as gushing in their praise as you’d like. Remember this and embrace
the free advice.
Ask for Help
Having
survived the initial indignation just accept that your ultimate goal of
publication rests on completely rewriting your paper, gathering new data,
undertaking more and/or different analysis, connecting to different literatures
or possibly all of the above. These new things might require some outside help.
Even if you know the literature(s) well enough, some outside help can be
invaluable in terms of the nuanced difference between reviewer #1 who says “add
more blah” and reviewer #3 who says “not so much blah, thanks.” Your colleagues
can add a tremendous amount simply offering a new reading of a subtly
constructed sentence or endorsing that you have got the gist of what you’re
being asked to do about right. In extremis, you might even write back to the
editor seeking clarification on how to handle “blah-gate” given the divergent
views of the reviewers. However, before doing so consider the following. First,
the editor is busier that you are (at least in their world view). Second, the
editor will be rightly wary of what they might perceive as an attempt to get
into negotiations over acceptance. Third, whilst the editor will know that
reviewer #1 is a genuine silverback in their community whilst reviewer#3 is
more of an aspiring alpha, they certainly won’t tell you this. Fourth, if the editor has given any thought
to this they will have offered their view in the cover letter. Finally, if they haven’t given any thought to
the dilemma that you’re drawing to their attention, they might not react well
to you pointing this out.
Write a Detailed “You said,
we did” Letter
As you work on version
2.0 of your paper, create a second document into which you cut and paste the
editor’s cover letter and the comments from each reviewer. This “response to
review” document will have as much bearing on your success or failure at the
next round of reviewing as the paper itself. Therefore, spend as much time crafting
the detailed, forensic, hyper-linked and cross-referenced “you said, we did”
letter as you do the revised paper. Use this as the basis for politely pointing
out that reviewer #1 requested “more blah” whilst reviewer #3 wanted less.
Speak to each independently by offering a point by point response to each
reviewer’s critique. As you do so however, cross reference using your
diplomatic skills to say that “we have added a few drops of blah in relation to
your request but we done so mindful of the request from reviewer X to remove
blah from our argument.” Most reviewers
will read their own review and your account of how you’ve responded first.
Often, this is the first time that they’ll see what the other reviewers said
about version 1.0. Understandably, this colours their judgement about whether
to advise that your paper is accepted as is, proceeds to round two or is
rejected. However, other reviewers will read version 2.0 of the paper on its
own merits before settling on their recommendation. Therefore, both the revised
paper and the accompanying “you said, we did” need to read well both
independently and as a pair. As your
paper makes its way toward eventual publication, it is a question of eat, sleep,
revise, repeat.
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