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[stratagem_007]

In June I submitted my first article to a major peer-reviewed journal in the social sciences. Today the editor forwarded to me the comments from the anonymous reviewers. All of the reviewers regarded the piece as publishable, but not in its present form. In other words, they suggest major revisions, which I expect will take many weeks to complete.

Over the course of producing this piece, I must say that I have developed a better awareness of the rigors of producing publishable material, and also a new, and profound, respect for writers of articles! I have never had anything published, and I feel my anxiety mounting. I did not know that there were so many holes in my argument!

What advice do you have for juniors like myself, and others who are new at getting their work published? What personal experiences have some of you had back when you were "first-timers"?

[polly_mer]

Do take the comments seriously and revise accordingly.  Unless the comments disagree, then decide which ones you like and just make a comment in your resubmission letter about why you have made these revisions.

Always write a resubmission letter that addresses all the concerns that the reviewers made even if you must write something like "While the reviewer raises point X, we believe that points Y and Z are sufficient to address point X which is tangential to our research."

Be as polite as you can even if that means that it takes a week of revision to make a resubmission letter that is snarkfree.

As a personal sharing item, we finally got a paper published that took two years and submission to three journals because we could not get reviewers to agree.  Is it an obvious conclusion to people in the field using similar techniques so it lacks sufficient novelty or is it not even science because no respectable researcher would use that technique?

[englitprof]

Persevere. 

Join a writing group--not one that just reads through the whole paper and makes comments, but one that gets nitty-gritty with your writing.  I did this for the first major article I wrote, and it was accepted at one of the top two journals in my subfield without revisions.

(I'd post the guidelines I received at the only faculty development workshop that wasn't a complete waste of time, but I suspect the presenter would see that as copyright infringement.  Suffice to say that having groups look at small portions of writing--no more than 3-4 pages at a time--often reveals issues that might be missed otherwise.)

Have people outside your subfield read your work.

Have people outside your department read your work.

[pembleton]

Some people think that revise and resubmits are just suggestions, so they do only SOME of what is asked of them and are surprised when the article goes down in flames. Don't be that person. Be meticulous. Your statement back to the editor is a signal of your resolve.

Two pieces of advice:
* While it sounds like this was a positive experience, it won't always be. Sometimes you'll get a three statement note from a reviewer that says nothing. Sometimes editors will not give you the benefit of the doubt.
* One way for people to get a little more settled out of the gate is to aim low for a journal that's a sure hit. The intuition here is in year one you have to show some measurable progress. Just getting on base helps.

Good luck!

[trabb]

Advice: definitely revise and resubmit.  A colleague of mine, an editor of a reasonably good journal, regularly laments that about half of the R & Rs never come back.  His point: if we suggest that you revise and resubmit, we want to publish it!

My process for revising and resubmitting:

1.  Group the suggestions into three categories: quick fixes, small revisions, and large-scale revisions.

2.  Do the quick fixes first and cross them off the list; these should be all of the picky things that the reviewers point out - "why did the writer use this word on page 18?", "There seems to be a word missing on page 23.", etc.

3.  Then give yourself a set deadline for the small revisions; I usually allow a week.  These should be small things that will take a bit of time.  "Why didn't the writer reference <work that you have never read>?", "Might the writer want to add a paragraph on <insert topic>?"

4.  Then set yourself a deadline for the large-scale things.  This will depend, of course, on the extent of revisions.  I've usually found that after doing points 2 and 3, the revisions seem nowhere near as huge as they did when I first read the reports.  Usually a month or two is what I need at this stage.

5.  Set it aside for a week, then reread for content to make sure that the changes you've made work.

6.  Proofread carefully.  Write a letter to the editor addressing the revisions, and send it off.

Congratulations and good luck.

[minorleaguer]

Great thread.  I am in the midst of my second revise and resubmit.  The first time I did this process I was an undergraduate working with Not So Great Journal, and now I am making revisions for Rather Prestigious Journal.  The comments on my manuscript for Not So Great Journal were much harsher than the comments on my second R&R, but the standard is much higher for Rather Prestifious Journal.  I feel as though the comments indicate that I'm close, but it is probably tough to tell.  

I have some comments and then a related additional question (if it isn't too hijacky).  Typically, with a revise and resubmit, you want to have that baby off your desk within a few weeks (I think a lot of people on here will tell you two weeks - any thoughts on this?).  So, in my opinion, you should have the manuscript workshopped and read by several known "outsiders" before you even pack it off and send it to a journal.  With a revise and resubmit, you maybe have two or three weeks, and therefore, don't have a ton of time to send it to colleagues.  It might be a good idea to consider the comments of the reviewers as "workshopping" the manuscript.  If you have one close friend or colleague who is willing to roll with the fact that you could get your editor's letter and comments at any given time during the semester and only have a couple of weeks to make changes - they might be the person to send the revised manuscript to before returning it to the journal.  These people need to know that this is a quick check rather than, say, round four of full edits.  

It might be a good idea to set up this type of relationship with a friend or professional colleague well before you get a letter requesting revisions.  

In sum, I've had success with taking the comments, writing them all down, doing my best to address them one by one, re-reading the manuscript and including a cover letter attempting to explain how I addressed the critiques.  Before sending this off I would run it past at least one person in your field.

My additional question would be about the letter.  I've started by thanking both the reviewers and the editorial staff.  Then I jump into addressing comments (again referring to my sheet where I wrote down a bullet point list of the critiques).  In this paper specifically, I'm in full agreement with all but one of the critiques of the reviewers.  I've done my best to summarize the critiques and note how I have addressed them.  With the critique I don't really agree with, I point out how I have attempted to strengthen my case.  

My question is this, should I point to specific changes in the manuscript or just note that I have made changes to certain parts of the paper.  Does this differ for the humanities, social sciences, and the sciences?

      

[minorleaguer]

  Usually a month or two is what I need at this stage.

Wow, so this would make it a three month process?

[science_expat]

My rebuttal letter would thank the reviewers then detail my response to each point. For example:

We thank the reviewers for their detailed and constructive comments and we have made the majority of the modifications requested. Our specific changes are outlined below:

Reviewer 1

On page 4, I don't understand the argument put forward by the authors. Do they mean to say..

We have now clarified our argument by ....

On page 6, the authors should reference...

Done.

etc... I've never had a paper rejected by any journals except Science and Nature and that work has always been published somewhere else.

[trabb]

  Usually a month or two is what I need at this stage.

Wow, so this would make it a three month process?

For me, yes - unless the editor requests that I complete them sooner than that; I also usually send an email to the editor acknowledging that I received the reports and that I will be resubmitting it. 

The time facter comes down to the fact that most of my R & Rs have included some version of "the author probably should read So and So's Very Longwinded But Important Theoretical Book."  I like to do this kind of reading slowly, and usually I'll actually read the book rather than skimming the introduction. 

Bear in mind that this will vary significantly based on a lot of factors.  Field is important here, I would imagine; R & R in English often involves lots of reading.  Scoop factor is also important.  It's highly unlikely that someone else is going to submit or publish something that would make my work obsolete.  The value of any article that I've written will likely be the same a year from now as it is today.  That's not always the case, I understand, in the sciences.  Finally, the type of institution at which one works; my time is given mostly to teaching rather than to writing.

[sirrah]

Usually a month or two is what I need at this stage.


Wow, so this would make it a three month process?

The thing is:  journal editors (and reviewers) have an uncanny knack for knowing to wait, wait, wait to get something back to an author until the exact day that several things converge all at once:

Final grades are due in and you have 50 papers to grade (oh, and Christmas is coming up, so you can't neglect your shopping/holiday duties)

Family is coming into town to see a cousin graduate

Youngest kid comes down with stomach flu (then next youngest, then spouse, then it's coming for YOU!)

That dink who chairs the committee you're on decides that a decision on Very Boring Topic must be made immediately and you need to research issue and go to tedious meetings

All the students who put in a lot of effort in your classes and realize that they might not make an "A" or even pass start emailing and stopping by your office multiple times a day.

Grant and paper submissions are due at the beginning of January, and you'd rather not spend the holiday working.
Oh, and there's the other revise and resubmit that came in two weeks ago and needs to be finished ASAP!

(Not to sound snarky, but I was amazed how long it takes to revise things when life gets in the way.  I usually take how long I "want" it to take and then double it.)

[science_expat]

Then here's the downside of letters journals in the sciences - they generally expect the revision in 14 days!

[stratagem_007]

Thanks, everyone, for sharing your suggestions and past experience. Having re-read my reviewers' comments several times over, I think I can manage this. Like Sirrah says, the reviewers' comments come at inopportune moments... like near the beginning of classes! And I still need to apply for postdocs and TT jobs and design a slew of new courses, and family is coming to visit next week...!

[jerseyjay]

Advice: definitely revise and resubmit.  A colleague of mine, an editor of a reasonably good journal, regularly laments that about half of the R & Rs never come back.  His point: if we suggest that you revise and resubmit, we want to publish it!

At the risk of sounding dumb, how can you tell when a paper is in the "reivise and resubmit" category? Once, I was a reviewer for a journal and we had to choose from four categories: 1)publish as is 2) reject outright 3 revise with minor revisions 4) revise with major revisions. But rarely has my own work been judged explicitly "revise and resubmit".

Of the last three peer-reviewed journals I have submitted my work to, I have received the following responses:
1) Very good work, but the writing needs to be reworked to be made easier to read and understand;
2) Very good work, but please clarify these three hard-to-understand sentences;
3) Interesting subject, but the way that the essay is structured doesn't work; please substantially rework the entire piece and we would be happy to consider it again.

Essay (1) required about one week of work. Essay (2) required about two days of work. I decided that essay (3) was not very good and collapsed the essay into another project I am currently working on.

Are all three of these "revise and resubmit"? If so, then the term seems to cover such a wide range of experiences since I would imagine almost NO papers are accepted exactly as submitted or, if they are sent to peer-reviewers, rejected outright. (The paper I was reviewing for the journal mentioned above was quite bad: it had no scholarly apparatus and referenced no other published work as well as tended to ramble without a point. I wrote in my report, "It is an interesting topic, but needs major revisions....")

Jersey J.

[dr_dre]

Well, I've had a submission sent to external review and then not been invited to resubmit. It had potential, but it needed a more cohesive argument.

As an aside, my advisor (in the humanities) says that this is where "blind" submission isn't wholly transparent. He says that, even though reviewers see blind submissions, editors know who the authors are and are often less willing to offer resubmits to unknowns than they are to knowns. Well, I think the phrase he used was "their pals."

[mickeymantle]

Dear Young Adjunct:

Let me just give you first my experiences on the article-writing front.  My first article was accepted without much revision in a lower-tier journal about six months after finishing my dissertation.  Then for about three years I traveled a long, long road.  Article after article was rejected.  I remember one of my reviewers being rather nasty, and saying that my arguments were "phony."  (Ah, the perils of blind peer-review!).  Then starting in mid-2004 I started getting articles accepted.  I published five articles within a two-and-a-half year period.  In fact, one of them won a major award from a state association.  Now I am hitting the resubmit-and-revise circuit again with some articles.  Moral of the story: It's a rough world out there, but keep plugging away!

Second, someone asked about whether articles are sent back with a "revise and resubmit" suggestion.  Here is one I just received:

The readers focused on the need for greater clarity in your arguments that would alert the readers to the significance of your research.  As it stands, the readers felt that, while the essay was well-crafted, it did not offer a new or different interpretation on the topic.  That said, both readers agreed that the manuscript has some fresh insights and could indeed make a significant contribution to our field. I am enclosing the specific comments of the readers to guide you in the revision process....

That's a pretty clear indication of "R and R," I would say.