How to Deal With Comments From Reviewers Science

In Feb 2020, Nature announced that it would give authors the option to publish their referee reports and responses to reviewers. Though this change is but a trial for this periodical, other Nature Inquiry journals accept opened the peer-review process. I applaud the effort of these and other journals to make peer review more transparent, and promise it will become a standard.

Whether you publish your referee reports with your newspaper or not, how you respond to reviewers' comments on submitted articles is essential to publication.

This guide tin help you prepare well-crafted letters to reviewers.

The right mindset drives the right response

Before y'all reply to reviewers' comments, celebrate that your research paper was sent to peer review. And be grateful that the reviewers carved fourth dimension out of their schedules to evaluate your work for free.

Getting a harsh reviewer is possible, but it doesn't happen oft. Most reviewers are helpful and offer constructive criticism, but they don't waste product much ink praising the manuscript.

While a helpful review summarizes the major positives and details the negatives of a manuscript, in full general, well-nigh reviewer comments are negative. Or, you'll perceive them as negative. This doesn't mean your newspaper has more weaknesses than strengths. It means that the reviewer has to detail your paper'south limitations, equally these—not its stiff points—need to be addressed by your revision.

Revise the manuscript before y'all reply to reviewers

When you lot're ready to deal with the reviewers' comments in a professional, objective way, discuss the peer review reports with your co-authors.

Decide which changes to accept and which to rebut, revise the paper, and only then start writing your responses to reviewers.

Responding to reviewers' comments

• Begin by thanking the reviewer for taking the fourth dimension to appraise your manuscript.
• Then, specify that you've addressed all the concerns they raised. Addressing a reviewer's comment doesn't mean you made the alter the reviewer suggested. It ways that you've considered it and either made the alter or explained why you chose not to.
• List all the reviewer's comments and your answer to each one. Utilise a unlike font or color to highlight your responses. This makes the text easier to browse.
• Avert giving yes or no answers. Even if y'all've been asked to make small-scale changes, such every bit correcting a misspelled give-and-take, say "Nosotros've corrected the typo." If it's a more than serious mistake, yous may likewise add together "We apologize for our error."
• Whenever possible, make your responses to reviewers self-independent. The reviewer or editor shouldn't have to peruse the manuscript to find a change you made. So, instead of "We've made the change. See page five, line 24 of the revised paper", write "Nosotros've inverse [original text] to [edited text] (page 5, line 24)". Simply if you rewrote an entire paragraph or section, respond, "We accept revised the text to address your concerns and hope that it is now clearer. Delight see folio 5 of the revised manuscript, lines 9–20, and folio 6, lines one–20."
• Do not omit whatever concern raised by a reviewer. You should address each and every comment—either make the change or reject it and justify your choice.
• Pick your battles wisely: Even if you lot don't agree with a small change suggested by a reviewer, information technology's ordinarily easiest to just brand the change. It shows you're open to suggestions.
• Exist tactful when explaining why you disagree with the reviewer. To support your argument, y'all may use supplementary material, such equally figures and tables, that yous won't include in the manuscript.
• When a reviewer fails to sympathise a indicate you made, don't presume they're ignorant. If they failed to understand something you wrote, yous've failed to express your thought clearly, and you dislocated at least ane reader. And then, it's likely the text needs editing for clarity and logic. (Related post: What to do if the journal editor recommends English language linguistic communication editing services).
• Respond to each referee every bit if they were the only reviewer of your paper. Do not answer to one reviewer with "Delight encounter our answer to comment 34 of Reviewer #2".
• End the alphabetic character to the reviewer with a sentence such as, "We would like to thank the referee once more for taking the fourth dimension to review our manuscript."

How to reply to peer review comments when submitting papers for publication

The length of a response depends on the complexity of the question. I've edited two-page letters to reviewers, and I've edited xxx-page messages. A letter to a reviewer should be as long as it needs to be to allow you to prove yous've considered the criticism you received.

When you hold with a reviewer

This is the simplest case. Acknowledge your fault and ostend you've corrected it.

Examples:

• We thank the reviewer for pointing this out. Nosotros have revised
• Nosotros have removed
• We agree and accept updated
• We have fixed the error
• This observation is correct. Nosotros have changed
• We take made the modify. The new sentence reads as follows

When you disagree with a reviewer's comment

Choose your words carefully when drafting your response. First, emphasize whatever office of the reviewer's comment you agree with. And then explain why you chose not to make the change.

Examples:

• We concur with the reviewer that farther elaborating on this indicate using new information would be helpful. However, we believe that expanding our dataset is neither viable, given the costs involved, nor would significantly support our argument. For this reason, we chose not to make this change, but we added the following judgement to paragraph iii in the give-and-take: "Though having a larger dataset would offering further insight…".
• Nosotros apologize if our original Effigy 2 did not show…. We did not intend to…. We have modified the effigy and hope that it is now clear that…. We believe that adding a new figure, as the reviewer suggested, would be unnecessary given that our new Figure ii shows….
• We capeesh the reviewer's insightful suggestion and agree that it would exist useful to demonstrate that…; nevertheless, such an analysis is beyond the telescopic of our paper, which aims merely to show that…. Notwithstanding, we recognize this limitation should be mentioned in the paper, so we added the following sentence….

In sum, whether you concord or disagree with the reviewer, aim to bear witness that y'all understood their comments and took them seriously.

What to exercise when reviewers disagree

When reviewers requite you conflicting suggestions, don't respond, "As some other reviewer suggested the opposite, we didn't change the text". Make a conclusion. Option the suggestion yous concur with and justify your pick to the other reviewer.

For case, you may say something like this, "As we received conflicting advice from another reviewer, nosotros decided to make the alter they suggested, because…. We hope this was the correct decision."

How to respond to reviewer comments—journal examples

Here are some examples of messages to reviewers. Notation that the authors who rejected a reviewer'due south proffer provided a valid justification:

• https://authors.library.caltech.edu/64174/4/ncomms12396-s2.pdf
• https://www.cs.sfu.ca/~haoz/pubs/zhang_cgf09_review_response.pdf
• https://www.bmj.com/sites/default/files/attachments/bmj-article/pre-pub-history/Second_response_18.v.fifteen.pdf
• https://perso.citi.insa-lyon.fr/rstanica/reviews/answers1.pdf
• https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41467-020-14449-z/MediaObjects/41467_2020_14449_MOESM1_ESM.pdf
• https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41467-020-14661-x/MediaObjects/41467_2020_14661_MOESM2_ESM.pdf

To find other examples, check the journals that publish the correspondence between authors, reviewers, and journal editors.

Responding to reviewers: Advice from the perspective of a linguistic communication editor

When yous reply to reviewers' comments, maintain a positive attitude and be open to criticism. Your responses will tend to reflect your mental attitude at the time of writing. Give-and-take choice, tone, syntax—they may all reveal to the reader your true colors.

I've edited letters to reviewers that conveyed the message that their authors did not welcome criticism to their manuscripts. Their tone was overly formal, the sentences too short, and the examples few. These letters needed editing for fashion to make them sound more like a discussion between professionals than a court defense.

And I've edited other messages that showed the writer genuinely appreciated the reviewers' comments. The authors of these messages used a positive tone, and their linguistic communication was less formal and more conversational.

In my experience, the messages in the starting time category tend to be much shorter than those in the second, and possibly it's not just a coincidence.

Responding to reviewers can seem like a chore, as nobody likes their work to be criticized. But if you meet the reviewers' comments as an opportunity to amend your research paper and go credit for it, responding to reviews will feel less burdensome.

Do your letters to reviewers need editing? Send me a message at editor@languageediting.com

heinrichheyesed.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.languageediting.com/how-to-respond-to-reviewers-comments-a-practical-guide-for-authors/

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